Tree progress

Thank you for all that encouragement. I like how the tree is coming out. What I don't like is the empty inch I'm going to have at the top of the tree. According to my swatch I needed 52 rows for the tree. But I've measured again and I actually need 60. I tried making the last branches a little longer to compensate, but now they look like antennae.



I don't want to rip at all, but I think I'll have to shorten the last two branches, and live with an empty space. I could rip a lot more and make some height adjustments, but I don't want to face the resulting tangle.



Heather raised an interesting question: What will I do about the back, indeed? I had no plans, but after taking a good look at the reverse side, I'm thinking I'll need one:




If this were an afghan for myself, I'd simply weave in the ends and ignore the ugliness of the reverse side. But this is part of an afghan that will be raffled for a good cause. If you won an afghan in a raffle, would you like it to be pretty on both sides or would you only care about the front?



My second attempt at brick red was not sucessful. I still got salmon pink, only deeper. Here's the before and after pictures:







This is the lesson I've learned: you might get certain color when working in a small scale, but when you mix dyes on a larger scale the little differences get multiplied and the original color will not be reproduced exactly. Sometime I'll get the money to buy a balance, but until then I must learn to live with the results. I'm leaving this skein of yarn alone for now. It's a miracle it did not felt with the second dipping.