Playing on the weekend

Finally. Thursday and Friday, the Tuesday knitting group finally managed to get together, albeit in two shifts. (I'd add the words Wednesday and Monday to the list just to get them in there but that would be just silly.) To mark the effort these ladies made getting all of us together, we have the now semi-customary sock shot. These will on occasion be shot when there are socks of great interest and variety. As you can see... Well not quite, but you do see the wonderful colours. I tell you, its a crying shame we took only one photo. My bad. I didn't want to put the photogapher out, and I overrode her wish to take a second. Next time I will let her! These are some lovely socks you are missing. Note the lovely salmon sock on the right? That is a special sock, whose story will deserve a fitting tell when the time is right.

This journey I have been on with yarn and strings is, at every turn, good for the brain, even if I still can't count past 2. I learned some interesting things about dyeing this weekend.

First off, soak the yarn longer than you think you should. Second, make sure your container is large enough. I was doing a simple dip dye with food colouring, and cooking it to set the colour and the yarn really should have been in a bigger container. Third, patience. It takes a really long time for the colour to be completely taken up into the yarn or did it just seem that way? And lastly, just start. Till you have experience, you won't know what you are going to end up with, so just start and enjoy whatever you get.

I planned for a little bit of a purpley blue, like the colours of a certain kind of wild flower that grows around here on the edges of the aspen stands where there are not too many spruce trees. But I got this, quite rewarding in its own way. It mimicked the colours of yesterdays sky. Maybe that is what this yarn wanted to be most of all. If so, I wish it well. It is lovely.

There are hints of the colours I was aiming for in the heart of this skein. The robins egg blue is so powerful on my monitor that it hides all the softer violet tones. Still it is a first and I am content.

I did learn one last thing about dyeing with vegetable dyes. Those Mr. Clean erasers on the market recently? They can make your blue hands look normal in an instant.

It seems the one thing I did not take the time to learn is to close the food colouring lid after you add the dye to the water.