FO and Experimentation

Finally! I finished GB's happy dorm feet socks. These were started with the first wool I tried dying with Wilton food dyes. The whole project was much fun, but I did run out of yarn. That put a damper on finishing the second sock. But now they are done and she can have warm tootsies in the dorm. Btw...it's so cold here in Ohio that most of the schools are closed. The wind chills are at 20 to 30 below 0. Anyway, for the socks I used a pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, which is such a wonderful book. It's so easy to follow and gives tons of options.


Now for the experimentation: I decided to try some one-pot Kool Aid dying. I put strawberry kiwi on the bottom, orange beside it, then lemonade and finally lemon lime. Something didn't seem right, though....The lemonade turned out to be white, "Arctic Powder." Not quite the effect I anticipated. So I mixed up some Wilton yellow and poured that in, too. I was not thrilled with the results, but I think the lemon-lime is an awesome color. Too much of it got overrun by the others, though. I expected the strawberry-kiwi to be more pink than red. Anyway, since I didn't like it so much, I decided to try carding the colored wool with some old gray roving I had from Bartlett Yarns. This stuff is really old. I used to think it was so great until I discovered that some roving is soft and silky. This stuff is pretty natty and hasn't improved with age.

The other part of my experimentation is that I've never made rolags or spun from them. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, but it was very easy to spin.

The result:














I call it "Sherbet on a Cloudy Day". Can't say as I like it all that much, but it's ok.