where is my VW bus, man?

I cast on for a pair of slipper socks last night-- swatching during the debate, and casting on to a little HP and the Goblet of Fire (nerd that I am, I have the DVD on Netflix and the audio book on my ipod. ipod for commute, dvd for rollicking evening fun.) I forgot how much more intense and un-Dumbledorey the second actor is. Sadness. He is way to LOTR for the HP world.

Anywho. The yarn I am using for these socks was hand-painted by yours truly. Hand-painted is a fancy, glorified, artsy term for "used Easter egg dye to color yarn while simultaneously making our apartment reek of rotten eggs for a week."

This was my first attempt at dyeing yarn, and I did it back in May. Having stocked up on 50 cent packs of dye after Easter, I used Kathryn Ivy's Yarn Dyeing Tutorial.


I was most excited about combining a few of my favorite colors--purple, blue and green for a spectacular iris garden effect. I am thinking Van Gogh glory. Vibrant and lush. These pictures are misleadingly iris gardeny. In reality, the colorway resembles a grateful dead t-shirt that is faded from years of hard use hitchhiking from show to show. Thus, I call this yarn my Wavy Gravy yarn after every one's favorite Ben and Jerry's Flavor summer camp running Hippie.


The yarn was a bare super wash chunky yarn from elann.com. Pictures of the dyeing process can be found on my ravelry page, here. I think its the 30 minutes of steaming wool soaked in vinegar that produced that lovely, lingering aroma in my apartment for several days. It would have dispersed immediately if I had a porch or garage or somewhere other than my bathroom to dry the yarn. Nothing like some stanky wet wool for potpourri!
Above is a pic of my first swatch, before I switched to a smaller needle size. I am just working a 1x1 rib all the way down to create a dense, woolly fabric to keep my feet toasty all winter.

I was digging about in one of my stash bins (ok, its the only bin. the rest is in tote bags.) and thought I would snap a quick pic of part of my stash for show and tell. I can see Knit Picks lace gloss in sterling and sun kissed, elann.com lace in aubergine, some elizabeth lavold chunky al, my beloved dream in color smooshy in happy forest, more wavy gravy, some natural cotton for a purse, and some leftover rowan natural silk. Welcome to part of my stash!



rosa