A Knit Full of Adventure

Some might remember the shawl I was knitting last month, for which I ran out of yarn. A couple of my friends from Sporum Forum (ravelry)helped me find a matching skein and sent it to me. Only, when it arrived, we discovered it was a lot lighter than the original yarn. That's when I got the sound advice of dyeing the whole shawl with tea. You can see the finished shawl here, with the ugly color difference:

So, I brewed up about eight cups of really strong tea and soaked the shawl in it. You can see how early on during the soak, the color difference is still discernible:

I let the shawl soak for several hours, though I was too impatient for an overnight soak. Then I took the shawl out, rinsed it twice and the then gave it a gentle wash. Some color did ran out initially but it was negligible by the time of final rinse.
Next came the blocking, the shawl is quite large. (I was too lazy to measure it).

...And finally some glamor shots. The post tea dyeing color came out to be a nice honey color. And no discernible color difference !!I love the shine the yarn has after blocking. Also it is so light and airy, I am tempted to wear it right now!

Stuck At The End

I have been working on the clover pattern shawl for the last many days, hoping to finish it this weekend. The rows grew shorter as I progressed (this shawl is knitted from outer edge inwards), but my stress level rose as my yarn ball gradually diminished in size. However, I still could not be sure if I had enough yarn at this point.

But this little ball of yarn was good for only another 1.5 pattern repeats, leaving me short of yarn for the last 6 repeats. I am guessing I need about 100 m more. So, until I can find that amount of matching yarn, this project is on hold, sad really as I was hoping to finish it this weekend.
However I am taking this as the point were I have fulfilled my resolution of finishing two FOs before casting on any more. So I will be casting on a project or two over the weekend, inshaAllah.
On another note, Ramadan is just two weeks away and I have the intention of limiting my craft activities during the month and concentrate on the spiritual side of things, inshaAllah. I have started work on my Quranic Arabic and hope to read the Quran with understanding. I can manage some already but hope to polish it further.