Adventures in Sock World

In anticipation of our upcoming Sock Yarn Painting Extravaganza, I thought I would play around a bit. Besides, I have a LOT of sock yarns just for that purpose.

The original plan was to dye the yarn yellow and handpaint green and red highlights. The yellow came out beautifully. Just the right shade of daffodils, I thought. I let the yarn cool down and laid it on plastic to paint. Here's where things went wrong.

I really don't think I should be trusted with dyes. I think I got a bit carried away and by the time I came to my senses, there was not a lot of yellow left on the yarn. It wasn't terrible. But not quite what I had in mind.

Note to self: Colours will bleed together during steaming. I watched the colours migrate for 20 minutes. The results were a lot more disgusting than I had imagine.

As I started to wind the yarn into a centre pull ball, I found I didn't mind the colours after all. There were interesting little flecks of bright yellows and greens here and there. Still, even the ugliest yarns can knit up into something beautiful, right?


Toe-Up

Knitty has an excellent article on different types of toes for toe-up socks. Short Row, Figure 8, Easy Toe. I never liked the Figure 8 cast on and I usually do the Easy Toe so I thought I would try the short row. It looks just like a little heel! The top of the toe is smooth - no corners! I think, depending on what method used for the short row, you won't even see the ridges on the sides.

One suggestion for the short row: use a different colour (non-fraying) yarn to mark where you wrap and turn. Otherwise, it may be hard to see where your last wrap & turn was and you have to redo your toe 3 or 4 times!

Now, the question is: Should I make the Efline's Socks or a Toe Up Pomatomus?