Thursday, January 28, 2010

Live Fast, Dye Young


A long time ago, I had a gift certificate for Blue Moon, and among the lovely items I got yarn for, I also picked up a skein of sock yarn on a whim. The colours looked lovely and I was pretty excited about it. Once I had it in my hands and wound it into a ball, I just couldn't imagine what pattern I would make with it. It's been sitting within my eyeline for months, and I have toyed with the thought of one pattern or another, but nothing seemed right.


In an unrelated whim, this week, I had an inspiration to make a certain sock pattern, but the yarn for it would need to be a semisolid bright red. Since I'm not buying new yarn right now, I remembered a skein of undyed yarn I had in my stash, and thought I should try another experiment in Kool Aid dyeing. Then I thought of this skein and an experiment in overdyeing, instead.

The base of it was mostly a very soft yellow, with some light minty green, a pinky red, and a soft brown. I figured that the red overdye would leave it many shades of red, some orangier (from the yellow) and some brownier (from the green and brown). It turned out pretty much like I anticipated, but with some spots less-dyed than others. I was initially a bit dismayed by this (probably from a combination of unsaturated yarn before going into the dye and also my own lack of stirring to ensure the dye was evenly distributed after the yarn went in) but it is really growing on me. I am going to see how it looks knit up, and then decide if I want to throw the completed socks back into some cherry Kool Aid to even things out a bit.


Aren't experiments fun?