The making of a manatee…..

Some of you will have noticed my absence over the last week or so (and those of you that haven’t should pretend you have, or It’ll hurt my feelings!). Last night I got back from a fantabulous road-trip to Tampa, Florida……many adventures to be had, and now I’m back, a fair amount of yarny blogging to be done, so here goes:

When I found out/invited myself on this trip, the one niggling worry was that I’d be gone for nearly two weeks, which would cut dramatically into my dying time. Not wanting to miss out on the double points on offer this month, I came up with a camp-stove based plan and packed my supplies:

Supplies: Camp stove, gas cylinder, saucepan, leftover Cascade 220 (from the epic cabled sweater project), Kool-aid, utensils for stirring.

 

I dyed the yarn using two sachets of kool-aid, pretty much exactly as I dyed my roving last time. My original plan was to go with shades of blue for a realsitic-ish manatee, but as Julianna has already discovered, the tropical punch flavour is infact red. No need to panic though, I went with ‘lime’ flavour, for a key-lime themed manatee.

 

Not a bad spot for it is it? I actually saw real life manatees (and dolphins) in this bay – very cool!

 

Once I’d bought the yarn almost to a boil, it was time to dry the skein. I tied it onto the wheel of our boat overnight:

 

 

 

 

 

So next comes the tricky bit. I had a browse of manatee patterns on Ravelry before leaving, and there are a couple of good ones. But I was up for a challenge, and decided to see if my crochet skills were up to ad-libbing. Time for more supply gathering:

Here we have the newly dyed and wound yarn, crochet hook, manatee postcard for guidance, and a notebook and pen.

Sadly, I lost patience with writing down the pattern, so apart from the flippers I have no notes, this is a one of a kind!

 

 

My family and friends will recognise this,  the ‘concentrating so hard that keeping my tongue in my mouth is just too difficult face’. I started at the nose and went for it……then frogged back to the nose and went for it again……then back to the chin…….you get the picture!

Anyway, after much to-ing and fro-ing, I am pleased to announce the birth of Rufous the Key-lime Manatee. He’s green, he’s friendly, he has hot nostrils, and he’s partial to Key-Lime Pie, and Pina Coladas:

Points? Let me see:

Toy: 0.5 points

Design: 1 point

Stash: 1 point

Dying: 1 point

Yardage ~ 100 yards = 1 point.

And with the magic double-dying bonus, that makes a 9 point Manatee!

I love him!

Ravelry project link here.