Sorry no pictures! Thank you SO MUCH for all of your comments and input. After looking at everyone’s suggestions, I completely FROGGED IT! Yep. I did. I wasn’t really satisfied with the designs on the sides, so if I was going to frog it back to the beginning of the gusset, I might was well frog it completely. The only bad thing is that the yarn is kind of weird knitting it back again. You know what I mean? Frogged yarn is never as good as “fresh” yarn, so it has weird little bumps here and there. I’m hoping they will go away when I wash it.

My solution was to change it to 84sts, but have 78 in the foot, and then increase to 84 in the gusset/heel. I wanted to keep the same gauge, because I tried knitting to a 8sts/in, and the design looked kind of loose. 9sts is perfect, esp with the Wollmeise yarn.

The good news is that I changed the design and it is looking fab! I am back to the gusset again and even though there are more stitches, it’s going really fast. Probably because I memorized the patterns! :)

The BEST news though is that I showed pictures of the socks to Billy and he is so excited about it that it *may* inspire him to write a new music video about socks! :) woohoo!!! So if you want to knit him some socks to push him over the edge to FORCE him to write a song, email me and I’ll let you know the details!

Big felted mess

Better, but still slightly felted

Woohoo! Success!

So after getting all those kool-aid packets with Linnea, I was sooooo ready to do some dyeing. What yarn did I choose you ask? Well, I had some sample yarn of BFL that was so soft and scrumptious! And what was that? Was it superwash? Of course NOT! Yes, I am a retard.

I found it very odd that I like very bright and happy colors when I buy yarn, but when it came to dyeing, I wanted really dark, rich colors. Yeah, you heard that right. That’s what I wanted to achieve with Kool-aid. I wanted a deep red/burgundyish color. Yes, I am a retard.

I start out following the instructions on knitty.com on how to do it. I chose the stovetop method. Actually, everything went very well, no mess or whatever. By the way, I decided to start easy and just do one color. They say to use one packet per ounce of yarn for saturated colors. I found that to be way too little. So I just kept adding more. I thought I was really careful with the water temps and everything, but apparently I wasn’t and it turned into a big fat f@#*#&!n felted mess. I was very sad. But I did achieve a rich red color that was sort of dark. The sport weight didn’t felt as bad as the aran weight. Don’t you find it funny that when you are TRYING to felt something, it takes the power of a washing machine to do it. But when you don’t want it to felt, just put a little too cold water and poof – you have a felted object. I did manage to rip it apart and make it back into a skein, but what to do with it. I don’t have the heart to throw it away and I don’t want to knit with it…any ideas? It isn’t that much yardage anyways. The sportweight is probably ok to knit into a baby hat or something. I told my story to Scout (of the infamous Scout’s Swag) about my felting and she said “how did you do THAT?” I hang my head in shame.

BTW, could someone tell me what cake dyes are? Are they the icing colors? Because nowhere on wilton.com does it talk about cake dyes. I cannot find the paste type food coloring (which I heard was better than the liquid), and the food coloring that we do have is only in limited colors, say 3.

So, after this disappointment, I tried again. This time, I used superwash BFL sock yarn. I even soaked it in a partial solution of vinegar so that I could get a more “heathered” look. Because the plain one color yarn is kinda boring. But oops, soaked up the color too fast, so I let it cool and then over dyed it with straight grape, and it turned out exactly how I wanted it – a deep purple that’s not uniform. I may actually knit it up into socks!!!

I am doing an exchange with the sock/spinning/dyeing goddess, cauchy09, and she is going to give me tips and tricks with dyeing. I really want to dye with Ashford dyes (I even have the dyes!), but I’m so paranoid about the “health risks” and I would have to get a mask and special dye pots that I’m too lazy to get.

At first I thought, wow, if I could dye my own yarn, then I wouldn’t need to buy any! But then you will ALWAYS want to buy stuff, so now I’m like why even try? Leave it up to the masters. Speaking of which, my Taste of Germany idea is kind of coming together. I have emailed several dyers now and just want to test out the other two. Stay tuned! I’m thinking of making the first kit “blue” (sorry Pamela!) because I figure if I can’t sell my 5 kits, *I* will have to use this yarn!

I just saw the movie “Sicko” tonight and man, I don’t think we can ever move back to the states. The state of health care in that country is just a mess. I know NO country is perfect, but it is sad to hear so many stories of people going bankrupt over medical costs. And then you hear Violet (of L&V) talk about her health horror stories and it’s really scary. The older you get, the more important stuff like health care is. Germany is not perfect either, but we don’t worry about the possibility of going broke because someone got sick, and college costs for our boys (although we are putting away SOME money). But now, after seeing that, we want to move to France. Haha! There may be a mass migration north to Canada, I think… I’m sure there are lots of criticisms for this movie, and Michael Moore is famous for being really biased, but one thing you can’t deny is that the system IS a mess and the government needs to do something about it!!!

And shhh…I broke my yarn diet alreadyagain. Yeah, I know. I hang my head even lower. I blame it on Elem, Sabi and Andrea. And hey, I gotta test out the yarn I’m sending right? right?

Well, yesterday was the official end of SP10. My upstream pal has sent me the last package, but it hasn’t arrived yet, due to the postal strike. It should get here this week, I can’t wait to get it. My, the time has just flown by and I had a lot of fun this time around. My downstream pal, Tini, is such a great person. I really enjoyed reading her blog and figuring out things that she would like. You can see what I got for her here, here, and here. I really hope I get to meet her one day, especially since she’s not that far away!

My upstream pal has been really good about keeping herself hidden. BUT just last week, she made a mistake and posted a comment on my blog using her “real” email/name and not the secret one. So I know her name (Nicola) and I know she’s in the UK, but I don’t know her blog. And I can find it out quite easily, in fact, but I’m choosing not to, just to keep it a surprise. I am really excited to “meet” her (meaning read her blog) and find out who has been sending me all this great stuff. You can see what she gave me so far here, here and here. And there is one more package on it’s way still. She has really great taste in yarn!

OK, so now that THAT’s over, I signed up for the Sock it to Me sock swap and it will be a secret swap. Same thing as secret pal, but you have to knit your pal some socks. Looking forward to it! I’m also part of the Summer of Socks KAL, but I’m so confused as to what I need to do that I’m just not going to do anything. I know, lazy ass. I know I’m supposed to send my “blog reader” a weekly email, but really, I don’t have the time for that, so I’m just going to quietly sit it out.