Work in Progress: Trillian Shawl

I've been knitting for about 4 years now. I picked up needles and yarn when I was going through some tough times. I had a colicky infant, I had just had major abdominal surgery to attempt to put back to rights my busted up abdominal muscles (sidenote: it didn't work), the huz was working INSANE hours. By insane I mean, a 70 hour work week was standard. My mom came to stay with me every day, from morning to night. I was bored and depressed and anxious. I had briefly attempted to learn how to knit when I was in my late teens but I lost interest.

Sitting on the couch, day in and day out, got boring really quickly. In desperation, I asked my mom to  take me to the craft store and teach me to knit. That day, a monster was created. Now, I have yarn stashed all over the house, I have projects in various stages of completion in a basket, overflowing, beside the couch. Most knitters will tell you it's almost impossible to only knit one thing at a time. Maybe in a time before the Internet, people could work on one project from start to finish. 

There's this evil amazing website called Ravelry. It has patterns for everything you could think of to knit and some you'd rather not have seen. Through the wonder of Ravelry, I have 9 pages of patterns (or 445 individual patterns). I will never be able to knit them all, if I gave up eating, sleeping, bathing, and tending children, I would still not have enough time to knit them all. If you happen to be a "hooker", there's also a wealth of for you as well.

One of my projects that is currently unfinished is the Trillian Shawl from Martina Behm. It is my lazy day knitting project. It's not terribly difficult so I can watch TV or keep an eye on the kids if they're having a rowdy day. It creates a beautiful, light shawl that you can wear in all seasons. Or so I've heard. Mine is about a third of the way finished. 

I have fallen into another crafting abyss... hand dyeing yarn. I love it. I love being able to control the colors and create custom yarns for projects I want to make. Because there's nothing worse than going to the yarn store to not be able to find the exact right color for your project and still leaving $100 lighter. I started with kool aid. It is insanely easy to dye yarn with kool aid. If you follow me on Pinterest, I have some neat pins on kool aid dyeing to get you started. I dyed the yarn for this shawl. I love the soft teal and the variegation came out perfectly!

I've since moved on to acid dyes, which sound hard and scary but aren't. The acid is usually vinegar. The color combinations you can create are amazing and you have a bit more control than with kool aid. I tend to stick to grays, blues, purples, and teals. They're my favorite. I've dyed a few skeins of yarn red but I haven't found THE red for me yet. I'm not quitting though. 

Do you knit? Crochet? Dye? What is your favorite craft or creative outlet?