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)