Drum Roll, Please...

Last night, I finished Birch! It took me right up until bedtime (and I was knitting so frantically that I may have broken a sweat), but I finished it.

Here's a picture of the finished product, though I haven't blocked it yet. I'm terrified of blocking it, so Julie's going to have to help me.



On Saturday, Julie and I spent the whole day dyeing. In the fall, we did Kool-Aid and Wilton dyes. This time, we did RIT and Dylon -- which meant we could dye wool as well as cottons and other fibers.

I was so excited that I was up and ready to go when Julie showed up. We started setting everything up, and then we decided that we really needed a few more materials, so we went to Meijer. And, while we were out, we stopped at Hobby Lobby, too. But then we got back and mixed our dye powders in canning jars. When it came to mixing our dyes, we didn't hold back. We mixed up base dyes for pretty much everything we could fit in jars. And then we stood back to admire our work:



Then we started swatching.



Despite all the mixing and swatching, we did actually get some dyeing done, too. We decided that the cottons turned out the best. I especially liked Julie's green and yellow hank:



In the end, we ended up dyeing four hanks of various cottons, one wool sock yarn, two worsted wools, and two mini hanks of wool, most of which you can see here, hanging to dry out on the deck:



It was definitely a long day -- we were busy from 9:30 until 5:30 -- but we had so much fun! I spent all day yesterday trying to decide what to make with all of my new yarn. Woohoo!