When the competition was over, and I had my final update submitted, the first thing I did was to be quite ill for a week. Stupid throat. The first thing I wanted to do was continue with the crafting. I figured I could continue with the work from the costume or I could start something completely unrelated.

So I did the sensible thing and began knitting a pattern called Passionvine Shrug by Andrea Marquis. I finished up the shrug last night and set it to blocking. It argued with me a bit about being stretched out to its full size, but it was worth the fight to see the design "pop".

The shrug is designed to be closed at the ribbing with lapel style pins, to give various style options, so I decided to make up my own closures.

This involved some wooden disks picked up from a craft store and some spirit soluble dyes to make up my own wood stain. I used approximately 4 times as much red dye to blue, and dissolved the dye with some blonde shellac in methylated spirits.





The result was a blue toned purple that I think is as close as I'm going to be able to get it to the yarn without too much fuss.





My final snap shows the buttons with two coats of stain, definitely looking a little on the blue side. I'll leave them overnight to ensure they dry out fully, then give them a liquid wax coating to keep their texture, and in a weeks time when my ebay purchase arrives, attach them to cufflink blanks. And vóila, shrug completeness.