Miss Messy at work!

I couldn't help myself - again! whenever I dye, I just can't resist throwing fibres or yarn in as long as the liquid shows even the slightest bit of leftover colour! I have had many skeins with barely any dye on them, but there's nothing to loose - it's easy enough to overdye again! same with the poison green - but this time I didn't add a skein; I put in a ball of sock wool. the idea was to wind two threads of the sockwool into one flat ball - which I'd then dye to achieve two very similar socks in the end. this ball was quite tightly wound - but it took the colour beautifully. I was pretty sure that the colour wouldn't penetrate fully, but I didn't think about the fact that of course the middle (where the cone of the ballwinder sits) would be loose enough to dye evenly.

this is the result - a strong green, nearly as strong as the first batch.

then I rewound the yarn, the outside went into the ball first this time.

obviously the lighter part is outside now, together with the patches from top and bottom, where the dye attached well.

I then sat the ball into half a pot of blue leftover dye, turned it over after half an hour and put the undyed half into purple dye. I figured 3 dye sessions should be enough for one skein - but I couldn't wait until the ball was dry (this takes extremely long!), so I wound the damp ball into a skein and hung it up outside. the dyes aren't spread evenly, on one end there's a lot of strong green, on the other end is more blue and purple - and the patches are spread out all over. but I still like the colour - now I just had to separate the threads!

this is not the fun part! of course when winding the two threads into a ball, the threads wound around each other, which meant that I had to unwind them again when making the separate balls! grrrhhh.... be warned, if you try this, you'll need a lot of patience! of course you could just start knitting with one thread and keep winding on the other - you still have to separate, but the annoyance factor might be lower during knitting:))

tada - the end result! two pretty identical balls of sock wool - each enough for one sock! I have to finish another slouch sock first (1/2 way finished), but I am looking forward to how the colours will look when knitted.

now - in my eagerness to dye a lot of sockwool - I made 3 more "double balls" like this - which I want to dye - and have to separate after doing so:)) if you hear funny sounds, that'll be me gnashing my teeth in the process.....