I mentioned in the last post the watermelon yarn debacle.  For those of you who didn’t believe it was as bad as I said, here’s the proof.  And it’s only through the magic of my mediocre Photoshop skills that you are seeing two socks, as I only started one, and this shot is of both sides.

As I said before, there is nobody I dislike enough on this planet (or at least will admit to disliking this much) to make them wear these socks.  I was going to toss the yarn, or at least bury it in the stash, but my wonderful husband suggested I re-dye it.  His suggestion was red, my thought was blue.  At 10:00 Saturday night (when there was nothing else to do!), I broke out the Kool-aid stash (I’ll have to take pictures one day, as you’ll never believe the quantities of Kool-aid to be found in the Knitnik house), and pulled out some likely candidates.  If you’ve read my post on Kool-aid dyeing, you’ll remember that I foolishly stated that the color in the pitcher on the package was the color of the Kool-Aid (with the exception perhaps of the color-changing ones).  So I just as foolishly assumed that “Raspberry Reaction”, which shows green crystals and pink drink in the pitcher, would be pink.  Glad I opened it before I opened another pink!  It was blue.  I put away the Blue Moon Berry and pulled out a Slammin’ Strawberry Kiwi (which I KNEW was pink), and tried both.  The pink was a bust, it just made a deeper red, with dark pink stripes.  Still not a red I would wear (and I’m not a red sock girl!).  The blue, however, was promising, and I think I’ve discovered the way to get a good purple with Kool-aid – it’s not to mix the pink and blue powders (or use the grape, which is muddy and gross) – it’s to first dye pink, then overdye with blue.  The parts of the yarn that were light pink (not too much) came out a beautiful lavender, and the dark red turned kind of burgundy.  The green turned aqua, and the whitish parts of course turned blue.

The result was a yarn that I love!  And would wish on friends, not just enemies.  Technically these socks aren’t for me, they’re for a blogger we read who’s walking in the 3-day walk for breast cancer.  Her motto is – “if you have boobs, like boobs, or love someone with boobs, go donate!”  With that motto, how could you not?  So anyway, the yarn is great, the socks will be awesome, and I’ve made something out of something I thought was trash.  Score!

The last thing I have to show you tonight is my work in progress – a sweater out of the gorgeous ArtFibers yarn I picked up in San Francisco.  It’s gorgeous, though the thick and thinness (thickness and thinness?) may drive me bonkers, and will definitely require major blocking, as it’s considerably bumpy right now.  But, it’s gorgeous, it’s soft, it’s all silk, and of course here in NC, it’s been close to 90 for a few days, so this will definitely not be worn before about October.  Here it is in all of it’s burgundy, gold, pink, green and brown glory!

OK, the real last thing doesn’t get pictures – it’s my Trekking socks in the pink/green/aqua striped colorway.  Sock number one was past the heel when I realized it was just too big, and the ribbing was too small.  I had done a 3×3, and it was snug.  I decided to start over with a 2×2 rib, 64 stitches instead of 72 (blah de blah blah for those of you who don’t care for details), and use a size 2 for the ribbing and a 1 for the rest.  I still would like the ribbing stitches smaller, but it fits much better.  It amazes me that I knit about the first 24 pair or so of socks on 3′s, and now I want to do them all on 1′s – I just love the look so much more.  Also, my knitting has loosened up a good bit, so anything on 3′s is huge now.  I’ve been cheating on the sock with the sweater, and right now the sweater is just so much more appealing, but the sock is definitely my portable project, so it will get some attention too.

Oh – and for anyone who cares – Mom’s vest didn’t fit.  Boohoo.  I was afraid of that.  It’s just too big across her teeny-tiny shoulders.  She’s going to dip the top half in some hot water and see if she can tighten it up a bit, and probably move the buttons too.  Hey – you try making something without a pattern for someone 1174.14 miles away, with no fittings, and see how close you come!  I did offer to rip it out and start from scratch – I think she was appalled!  She’s going to play with it for a while before she lets me do that!

7 more days of school, a few more end-of-year parties and events, and we will be done.  Until camp starts.  Since I work all summer, we don’t get much stay-at-home time, even in the summer, but life calms down with no homework, scouts, gymnastics, band concerts, sports events, etc.  Whew!  No wonder I’m tired!  Oh – and the best news of all – Mark got a full-time job offer with the company he’s been contracting with for 17 months.  No prospect of moving anytime soon, and benefits and paid time off!  We are so blessed!!!

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