Yesterday I had a knitting frisson. Here’s the skinny:

A couple of weeks ago, we had a sock-yarn dyeing day at Jantine’s (Lisa was there too). We used several different methods to dye the wool, from simply mixing a dye bath of a solid colour and throwing in the skein, to dipping sections of an ultra-long skein in different baths, to putting the skein in first and then adding different dyes to see what would happen. This last method was pretty scary to me, being a control freak and all, but I did it anyway and this was the result (the ball on the right). I was tempted to call it my “vomit” colourway, or “pizza” or something, I just thought it looked so random and retro… but Jantine was crazy about it, so I trusted her good judgment and decided not to incinerate it just yet.

Now to part 2: Recently M. of the DomCantorij turned 36, and therefore a birthday present was in order. I had been to Cologne and picked up some skeins of sock yarn there, including the purple one in the photo below. She said she liked the colour, and when I showed her the Monkey Socks by Cookie A., she was delighted. I decided I would knit M. a pair of purple monkey socks.

But then I thought: nah. The purple was too diffuse to do justice to the pattern, so I went over to M’s with a bag full of other options, one of them my vomit yarn. She had conniptions when she saw it, and I started to think that maybe the short colour segments in that yarn would actually show off the pattern quite well. So I started knitting yesterday, and… I think the result is just amazing. This is going to be the best ever pair of socks I’ve ever knit, and I’m so happy that M. is going to be the one to wear them!

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