So the other day I sat in bed knitting away on the Rebecca sweater sleeve feeling rather BORED, and suddenly thought "I really want a soft violet-y merino sweater". Between the yos and cables, I mentally sorted through my wool stash and remembered I had 5 more skeins of KP's cream merino sock yarn somewhere. whoppeee! I tossed my sleeve aside, jumped out of bed and started digging through my VERY cluttered closet.   I finally found it, perfect and beautiful, and still in the plastic packaging! I hopped in the car and drove to the nearest grocery store. From knitting  to driving was only a period of about 15 minutes! Yes, I can be super impulsive with my fiber-related endeavors. I've always believed that you should follow your fiber inspirations...immediately! (This is how I ended up with a humungo pile of ufos!)

Doing a small test-batch would have been the good-dyer thing to do, but I was feeling far too excited and inspired by the vision of beautiful purpley skeins of yarn! Soon a pot-o-yarn sat on the stove in a dark purpley kool-aid mix getting quite happy. When it was time, I pulled it out, gave it a rinse and held it up and exclaimed "ewwwwwww! this is the ugliest  dye-job ever!!" (then immediately thought.."no I've seen worse!" I'm sure you have too).  It was streaky and very much variegated. I don't use variegated that much because a lot of it pools, and ugly pools are just plain....ugly! I had wanted a pretty even color, with minute color variation (sort of like the HPY merino I used for the ribbed cardi). I ran upstairs and grabbed another skein, and changed my method up, really believing this would alleviate a lot of the color variation. NOPE! Still variegated!(though not quite as badly) I was so disappointed! I hung them both in the shower and forgot about them til the next day. When they were dry I wrinkled my nose and scowled thinking "I just wasted about 800 yarns of yummy merino!". I twisted them into little skein-balls and the more I looked at them the more I thought "hey! you guys are kinda pretty!" And they are! Look...

Here are the mixes I used

on the left:
5 grape
2 berry blue
1 red something (maybe cherry?)

on the right:
5 grape
3 berry blue

I soon grew quite enamored with these skeins...they looked so pretty, were violetty without being obnoxiously PURPLE, and were buttery soft. The fact that they weren't on the solid side, and would definitely not become a sweater stopped bothering me so much.  I decided that they were destined to become socks! That way, if they pool too terribly, they can just hide in my shoes :D So I balled 'em up on my loovveelly swift and ballwinder. They're even pretty in ball form!

Hehe, and yes, you read right! I who have never knit socks, never had the desire to knit socks, and almost swore to never knit socks will be knitting socks!

The yarn made me do it.

Plus I'm hoping I'll figure out what the ginormous FUSS is about SOCKS.... you crazy  sock knitters with your massive sock yarn stashes ,sockapawhatas, jaywalkers, and constant in-progress sock pictures. Of course I have no idea where to start....I know I need dpns (though there's that constant chatter about some magic-loop business) but I haven't the slightest clue beyond that...gusset? short rows? heel flap? whaaa? So crazy sock knitters...help a newbie! :D

I knitted a little swatch to check out the color...not too bad!I think they'll make cute socks! :)

(the color is pretty close, but still a little off)

Comments

[amped!]

check out WendyKnits' free generic toe-up sock pattern. good explanation of short-rows (for heels and toes), and BASIC so it's easy to improvise on. like super-easy.

to get even colors with kool-aid dyeing, i've made sure the yarn is SOAKED before adding it to the hot kool-aid/water/vinegar mix, and that the pot it's all in is BIG, so the yarn has lots of room to swim around. *not sure exactly why, but the amount of water doesn't seem to matter much in the color saturation (except for evenness); keep your eye on the [yarn:dye:vinegar] ratios.

Cheerio!

[Spring]

Hooray for socks! The colours you made are lovely.

[allison]

Hey :) I count as one of those crazy sock knitters, right?! By the way, the yarn is beautiful, and hopefully it will be perfect for a small circumference - stripes are way cooler than pools. If you're interested in a fairly easy way to make toes and heels, check out knitty's little tutorial on the short row variety. The sockapaloooza lady (blue blog - you can link from my page if you need to!) has a bunch of links to free patterns, too. Good luck!

[April]

Magic Loop is my favorite method, check this out,

http://knittinghelp.com/knitting/advanced_techniques/

Click on the Magic loop link and watch! With this method the socks are divided in half instead of on four dpns, for me it's easier to figure out what I'm doing. I like short row heels and toes much better than the gusset thing - but you may want to do the traditional type first.

The yarn is AMAZINGLY loverly =) good job!

[Morgan]

Oooo socks are not hard at all they just look intimidating. And they are realtively quick projects with a high satisfaction rate. The yarn that you dyed will look fantastic as socks. Short rows are really easy. You might want to try both methods of knitting socks from the toe or the cuff to see what suits you best. There are some great links if you're starting out on this page on the right side under the sockapaloooza info. http://alison.knitsmiths.us/
Good Luck!!

[Alexa]

The purple yarn is lovely.

[James]

HEy, that dye job came out great and thanks for putting up the recipie for it. I tried dying purple one time with kool-aid and it came out this yukky greyish colour. I just used grape by itself so seeing what you did I can see where I went wrong. I should have mixed in some blue and reddish. Hmmmmmm.... back to the dye pot some time. Oh, the magic loop is really a fun technique if you don't mind messing with the mouse ears the extra long cable makes when your knitting. Also, a really fun way to work with the variegated yarns is to take the beginning and end of your yarn ball and knit with each alternating. You can get some fun colour results and avoid that colour pooling that can happen if you just knit from one end. Another fun way is to knit with the variegated and a solid colour similar to what the variegated is (in your case purple) and knit with each of those alternating as you go. That can make a soft gradation of stripes. Also, you can always knit socks that don't have heels for your first pair. But then you wouldn't learn how to do heels. Have you seen the book, The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook by Lynne Vogel? It shows many ways to knit socks, has spinning info for spinning your own yarns, and also has dying info including dying with kool-aid. They even have socks with each toe knitted seperate. Its a fun book with lots of colour pictures and ideas. Have fun knitting socks : )

[Siow Chin]

The colours look great, I'll keep in mind your 'recipe' when I try dyeing.

[wenders]

I love knitting socks - mainly because they're so 'transportable'. :)
And yup, I got the yarn -- thank you! Sorry for not letting you know sooner!

[Beak Knits]

This is my first visit to your blog and wow! I have 8 balls of Palette form KP I have been avoiding because I wasn't crazy about the cream color. I know what sweater I want to do...but now I realize they NEED to be purple!

I love the way your colors came out, and this is just what my yarn needs. I am going to head to the store this afternoon to pick up more Kool Aid. This is no small task since we are in the middle of Bike week here in Daytona.

Thank you so much for the inspiration!!

[PainterWoman]

I'd forgotten what beautiful work you do. Can't wait to see the snowflake fair aisle finished. LOVELY LOVELY. If the sleeve skein isn't the right color be sure to either look on eBay, google or call your LYS. Mine (Woolie Ewe in Plano, TX) will call all sorts of places, just to be helpful, even if they don't get the sale.
I think the iniebriated fun fur girl might oughta have worried about, um, a bra (or uplife!) before the scarf.

[~Jo~]

Socks are grrreat! The cost to buy yarn for a project is low aka affordable, you can use dpn's, 2 circular needles or magic loop. They make for a small and portable project. I'd suggest making a first sock that is basic, just to get a feel of how it goes. Either you could make a baby sock (or two!), you can knit socks with worsted too so it's not as intimidating as knitting on size 2 needles. ;) Also always try out your sock as you are knitting it, nothing worst than realizing it doesn't fit! ACK!

Here's where I learned to knit socks:
Terri's socks 101: http://www.royea.net/sockdemo1.html
Also check out Knitty's socks 101: http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring05/FEATsocks101.html

If you are comfortable with short rows, go for it or try the sherman heel, you saw on my blog. It might be hard to knit a sock (more intimidating than hard though)but oh so rewarding! ;) Good luck and have fun, there will always be someone to cheer you up if you need help along the way. :)

[Dani]

Frankly, I knit socks because it impresses people. To a non-knitter, handknit socks are as amazing as a cabled sweater but they take far less time to complete. Also, buying enough yarn for a pair of socks fits into my budget better than the yarn required to knit a 3X sweater for myself.

BTW, I'm glad that you have moved to a new virtual home. I never could get your Xanga site to work with my Bloglines list so I would forget to check your blog. Now I can keep up with you!

[Rebecca]

I did a sock tutorial last January, but I bet you won't need one. The colors are very pretty.
And grab your scissors and join the game! You are after all a devil-may-care raven-haired bookseller.

[sue]

Hi May - I'd love to give you a card!! Email me your address and expect one in the post :)

Sue.

[Darra]

Love the new blog...and love that fair isle sweater! I think that's a wonderful dye job you did there.

[Susan]

Oh, that yarn is gorgeous! I love purple, but there are shades of it that I really don't like much. You have managed to created two beautiful shades of purple, though I am partial to the one that doesn't have any red in it. They will make beautiful socks.

[MJ]

I dyed some fiber with Grape koolaid a while ago and thought I made a huge mistake using it. But the results were surprisingly nice. I do like your skeins, actually. Grape koolaid, who knew. But the smell! What did you think of the smell!

[MissMeshell]

Oh GORGEOUS colours, they are so beautiful :) I too am getting the sock knitting itch for some reason, probably from looking at all the cool socks on everyone's blogs. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
MissMeshell xx :)