The end of last week and Saturday kept me very busy charting, re-charting, and knitting on not just a swatch, but the real McCoy. I cast on 413 stitches, and merrily knit the setup row plus ten pattern rows before I retired on Saturday evening. I awoke some time during the night and realized something.

There was no way I was going to get a whole triangle out of 800 yards of yarn and a starting base of more than 400 stitches. No way.

Sunday morning, instead of relaxing with my book I came back into my office and re-charted the whole shawl. I printed out the new pages barely in time to get ready to go to Denise’s house for her dye party. Dave was invited, too, and he wanted to take a little something extra along, so we swung by the pub to get our growler filled. Things were in full swing at Denise’s by the time we got there. I didn’t manage to get very many pictures, pathetic blogger that I am, but I had a lot of fun watching the proceedings. Didn’t I dye, you ask? Nope. At this point I am studiously avoiding dunking any dye into a dye pot. I’ve always been attracted to this type of activity, and don’t want to be consumed by it at this point in time. I need to concentrate on designing, not dying yarn. It was loads of fun to watch, though. Some of the yarns turned out especially nice. I’m looking forward to seeing them dry at knit knight tonight.

What did I do at the dye party since I wasn’t dying? Got it. I ripped out those 4,000-plus stitches of shawl that I’d knit, cast on a mere 357 stitches instead, and got started on the much smaller shawl. I should be able to get a whole shawl out of this new number of stitches. I hope. Fingers crossed.

Though neither of us did any dying, and I only got a few rows re-knit on the shawl, Dave and I both had a great time at the dye party. Huge thanks to Denise (blogless) and her dear hubby. Another Dave.