2 balls...of yarn

7 Small Shawls: T - 208 days and counting down.

I've ripped back the giant edging swatch and am continuing on with edging the whole shawl. I can't wait to block this shawl! Squeeeeeeeeee!

Ahem. Anyway.

I've been using two skeins of sock yarn from The Royale Hare for Maia. Karen is local to me and dyes some colors especially for me. Well, she was dyeing up one of them (Verdigris) when dye pot disaster struck and this particular color resulted! She didn't like it, but I loved it with a fiery hot passion. A passion which she was kind enough to requite. There were four skeins; I kept two and gave my friend A two for her birthday. Her love for yuck green is second only to mine, but we argue about that. She thinks she loves it more. Ha! As if!

Karen likes dyeing smaller skeins of yarn, because it works better with her method, and each skein (at 245 yards) is more than enough to knit one cable-y intricate confection-y sock of a pair. This is all well and good for those who are buying two skeins of sock yarn to actually knit socks, but for those of us who like to knit other things with sock yarn, well! Multiple skeins can sometimes be a little bit off from each other even though they shared a dye pot. What might be ok when they are on separate feet is not ok when they are together. When that happens, a distinct line will result. This is why hand dyers usually say to work from two skeins at once, knitting two rows from one and then switching to the other.

Here's where my mini tutorial comes in.

I used to carry the yarn up the side of whatever piece I was knitting, but that doesn't work very well for shawls. It's much too easy to pull too tight and end up with one side wonky. So now I do it a little differently. Here we have two unsuspecting balls of yarn, one a teensy little bit darker than the other.

As you can see, both are attached and being worked simultaneously.

(Avert your eyes from my uneven stitches please! And always remember, lace looks like crap until blocked!)

On every right side row, I knit the first stitch with both yarns held together.

I then continue on with only one strand, alternating the yarns every two rows.

It makes a much nicer edge for a shawl. If I were going to sew a seam and hide the edge, it wouldn't make much of a difference, but as the edge needs to be nice and stretchy and look good, this method is the clear winner for me!

And the yarn? Can we convince Karen to dye more? YES! She's going to do it! We're leaning towards calling it Bug Juice, but what do you think?