hot tomato, complete with spots

with that hot red ella rae lace burning a hole in my stash, i thought i'd use it to make citron (my rav linky).

citron calls for 470 yards of lace weight yarn.  i was 10 yards short.  when i researched other projects that made citron with my yarn choice, everyone ran into the same problem.  many of the shawls either had shorter ruffles, or a contrasting yarn was used for the ruffle.  i realllllly wanted my shawl to be all red, but i also didn't want a short ruffle, so i chose my jitterbug becos it had similar red in the colorwave.

ironically, i only knitted 6 rows of the contrasting yarn for the ruffle, becos as much as i liked the pop of the yarn against the red, i really didn't want it to overtake the shawl.



awful pictures with awful lighting

after i cast off, i popped my shawl in a cool eucalan bath (thanks, kristin!), got my blocking wires and blocks out, and was horrified by what i found next.




i found ugly black splotches on the red shawl.  dumbass me forgot to test the colorfastness of the jitterbug,  and becos the ruffle scrunched up and under the shawl, it bled black onto the red fabric.  i gently rubbed the fabric with my fingers, then tried using my mesh bath scrubbie to see if that would lighten it up, but no, the black marks remained.  i couldn't rub the fabric very hard, becos this was laceweight merino yarn, and i was afraid that vigorous rubbing would felt the fabric.  bugger.  i'm lucky i soaked my shawl in my bath tub.  usually i use the downstairs bathroom sink (a tiny bowl) for soaking - the spots could have been worse, in a smaller basin.

i drained my tub and rinsed my shawl, gently rubbing at the marks.  no luck.  i gently squeezed water from the shawl into the tub, then laid it on a few towels for blotting.  it blotted for about an hour, then i pinned and blocked.

the next day i unpinned.  and those darn spots were still there.  i probably should have left the shawl on the wires a bit longer, becos i swear the shawl shrank back to size.





i stitched a small silver initial bead at the top of the shawl.  sort of similar to a sig'nit.  at this point, it's my favorite thing to my shawl.  :/