Chain of events

They say that every journey begins with one small step.  Ten days ago, I had no clue I was going to be doing this.  My friend Teresa gave me a pattern.  For socks.

It's a beautiful pattern and has an intriguing sideways cable, don't you think?  They are called Winding Road Socks and are designed by Erin Walker.  I wanted to make them but having no appropriate yarn I put them off for later.

These socks would not wait.  On a visit to the thrift store, I found a ball of wool for 75 cents.  It looked to be the right weight for socks so I brought it home.  A closer look showed me that it had been wound with two strands - not plied - just two held together.  So, the first thing is to take it apart.

Two piles of string on either side of me.  Time for the niddy-noddy.  A few minutes of winding delivered two skeins with about 250 m of yarn in each.  But, oh, this is too plain.  We need some color.

Reach for the dye pot.  I couldn't decide on a color and for some reason had pink in my brain.  I put the yarn to soak while I brewed up a lovely rich orchid shade.  My plan was to have some tonal thing going on and I  lowered the skeins in gradually.

But this yarn took the dye so well that it's quite uniform.  That's kind of rare for me.

Here's one sock half knit.  They'll make lovely bright boot socks.  Perfect for spring hiking.

I seem to enjoy doing things the hard way.