More colors

Socks for me too! Me, me, me! I want something red now. I've been eying all kinds of sock yarns lately, trying to find a red that's not too stripey, not too busy, not self patterning (they all seem to be self patterning these days), and doesn't cost $ 20 per pair of socks. But I haven't been too lucky with that. So the Inspirations yarn was to be my saving grace. And by the way, I REALLY like that yarn! Nice to knit with, soft but not too soft, beautiful even stitches... do I need to go on? It's just a nice solid sock yarn, and best of all, superwash. With my dyeing experiments, I've found the instructions from Pro-chemical and HJS Studio very helpful. Other than that, I just try things that I think might work out. I haven't wanted to make it too much about measuring and being exact, because I get to do more than enough of that at work. So it's kind of like my cooking, I just throw things together and hope it turns out ok. ;)

Ok, so here we go. My idea is to use the microwave method for making yellow and dark red stripes in the yarn, then tie those spots with scrap yarn and immerse the whole thing in red to get a light to dark, yellow-orange- red effect.
So far so good... here's the yellow and dark red spots, some tied with yarn.
But after the immersion: oops... not quite what I was looking for. I thought the dye would seep in at least a little bit, and cause a gradual change from red to yellow. Not the case! Look at those sharp changes -me not like! So back to the drawing board. I squirted some red over the yellow and stuck the whole thing back in the microwave. Much better -not perfect, but better. I think I can live with this.
















And wound into a ball:
I started a sock right away, but... You ever had one of those things where you end up knitting at least 3 socks to end up with a pair? Well, this is one of those times. I've knit at least a sock and a half so far, and still don't have even one sock done. Sigh. And I'm really not even liking the color so well, although it looks nice on the ball, so my inspiration to finish is dwindling down quickly.

To top off the lowly knitting mood, I had one of these on-line yarn order faux pas's. I ordered a bunckh of Regia sock yarn from Royal Yarns thinking I found a good deal -well, guess what. The balls are 50 g, not 100 g. I feel so stupid for not noticing that on their site (yes, it's mentioned there), just thinking they were the same "one ball makes a pair" balls that I've had before.

So this is where the Finnish "sisu" comes in (yeah, I'm full of it!), and I'm going to finish those damn socks no matter what! One of the bonuses of that will be that I'll finally have this yarn figured out gauge-wise, and will have the size perfected for my little duck feet.