Koolaid dye

This weekend I dyed 2 skeins of yarn from knitpicks using the knitty koolaid tutorial and chart as a guide. Here's a picture of one dyed skein of merino wool:



To color it, I used two packets of lemonade koolaid, and one packet each of cherry and orange koolaid. Our whole house still smells like koolaid and I'm afraid I'm never going to wash the fruit punch smell off my hands. Even our kitty, Luna, who loves yarn refused to touch it. You can see her tentatively sniffing it in the picture above, but the fruitiness was just too much for her to bear.

I attempted to wind the yarn into center pull balls by hand. I contemplated buying a yarn ball winder, but I didn't think they were worth the $40 price tag. But after spending h-o-u-r-s this weekend winding yarn into tangled, sloppy balls and then unwinding and unknotting them, I see the value of a yarn ball winder. I've ordered one from knitpicks.com and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.

After I finally get the yarn wound into a ball, I'm going to attempt to knit some toe-up socks with the dyed yarn using these sites as references:

toe-up KAL
universal toe-up socks
anastasia socks
chain cast on tutorial
short row heel tutorial
picot edge variations

Completed: needle case

I finally got sick of losing stitch markers and darning needles, so I made this handy needle case to hold all of my knitting paraphernalia. I also got this really nifty drawstring bag from REI to hold small projects in progress. Perfect for knitting on the bus!

WIP: ugly socks

Here's my socktoberfest sock thus far:



The pattern is from lion brand yarn, and I am not particularly impressed with it. I used it to make my first pair of socks, which were knit with slightly thicker yarn and turned out ok. But I hate hate HATE making heel flaps. I thought it would be easier on my second pair of socks, but it wasn't. Also, with this thinner yarn, the heel is not looking right. Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?



My next pair of socks is going to be toe-up, possibly with size US 2 instead of US 3 needles.

WIP: quilt

This last weekend I met with my husband's family to work on a quilt for his sister. Here's a picture of the fabric before we started:


Here's the quilt with the 8 large columns sewn together, after only 1.5 days of working:



It's going to be king-sized, about 104 inches square. I love it!