A little color

The grey socks have a heel but no picture. Instead, I have pictures of a colorful experiment. Kathy over in Runs with Needles has dyed several sock blanks, which eventually tempted me to buy one.




I left it alone for a while, but the recent epidemic of gray and dark green left me lusting after some bright blues, greens and purples. Undecided, I used all three colors. Actually, I used five different dyebaths. The result is a progression from deep purple to green.



There are a few irregular splotches here and there, so it is not a very smooth progression. I used plain food colorings and vinegar. Lots of both. All these bottles were new from the box when I began.



Lessons learned? I should have threaded stitches on both sides with waste yarn before dyeing. As you can tell, both ends kept unraveling. Some of the splotches can be blamed on those unraveled ends coming in contact with sections not yet dyed (notice that I am not blaming my own lack of hindsight or dexterity). Another lesson is to use two different rinsing pots and hold the blank from the middle while dunking it into these two pots. The middle is best rinsed under running water. The final lesson is to have everything ready before you begin and not worry about the cleaning (or anything else, phone included) until the process is over, even if the process takes about 6 hours.