My Current Craft Ventures

Work progresses on the granny square afghan.  I've decided to scale down the size due to the cost of purchasing more yarn to make it the original intended size to fit a Cal King bed.
Now I only will use 25 sqaures of each of the 5 colors and will edge it in white, which I am hoping will be ok and not contrast too badly.

I've started a new project as well to give me a break from the never ending parade of grannies...I'm crocheting this shawl

I'm using a wonderful handpainted sock yarn from TurtleDove Yarns, in their Snow Queen colorway which is a beautiful mix of dusty blue, tannish brown, grey and white.  I plan to do the edging bit in a light fingering weight baby alpaca yarn in a soft almost baby blue.  It's a differnt shade than the blue in the sock yarn, but I do think it will add a nice element to the yarn.

As for other crafty news.  I've got my order of undyed yarn from Lions Brand and KnitPicks.  so I have 15 hanks of yarn ready to dye.  I splurged and picked up some Jacquard Acid Dyes to move away from the Wilton's which although admittedly cheaper, just broke too much.  I will still use them but will be more for experimentation.

I'm on the hunt for a cheap microwave to cook the yarn in.  I do prefer that method for hand-painted yarns....incredibly easy...2 minutes in, 2 minutes rest and if you do two batches at once, one rests while the other cooks...easy peasy and you only need to cook for 6 minutes....very easy peasy.  I do want to try the canning jar method of placing the yarn in sections in a jar and steaming and seeing the results from that.
Also am going to have the hubby build me a warp board so I can do self striping yarn and play around with patterns that way. 
So the search for a good size cheap microwave continues. Our local thrift store had a few, but they were tiny and I'm not sure my cooking containers would fit, which reminds me I need to find some glass containers too for use with the jacquard dyes.  That is the one bonus with Wilton's...they are food safe.

I promise to get my dyeing tutorial up soon and pics of all my current projects!