Its toasted!

Yup - Toasy is done, finished, hot buttered, or with marmalade or whatever it is thats appropriate for a sock called Toastie. So .... today - Presenting Toastie photos, and some dying ... I've been playing with lichen to dye my yarns - and thats a whole lotta fun. Plus we also got our last sock kit from Vintage Purls, and it is amazing, I was hoping to link to a photo on her site because the last sock is so clever, and I can't photograph it yet as I haven't knit it yet .... but she has been so busy designing and dying and skeining and running a yarn business ... well there is nothing yet to link to. I'll try and post photos of the yarn next time.
So presenting Toastie ...












Oh - you want to see them on? ok ...












... and that heel gusset increases on the sole, well they don't show up here so well, but if you sort-a-squint you might see the differences. Which of the two do I like? Hard to say - perhaps they would look better on the top of the sock? Of the two - I'd probably knit the one where I decreased inside the markers resulting in an increase triangle again, but I'd make it line up with the heel flap width.










But - onto the next thing, First you take some yarn, and soak in vinegar water for a few hours, or in my case days because some times you don't get back to stuff as quickly as you plan. The family have been very good about having a bowl of noodle looking yarn smelling of vinegar in the corner of the kitchen for the best part of a week. And you take some Sticta Coronata (scroll down) which looks like this ...



and soak it in boiling water for 5-10 minutes until it looks like this (all the instructions are on the packet)







and you strain off the coloured liquor, add the yarn, warm it a little but not letting it boil and look .... a few moments latter. I was intrigued by the idea this material produced a range of colours all sort of coordinated but needed no mordants. I read about this lichen on KathyR's blog (who now has a wing spinning wheel to!).




Then you repeat the process with a new batch of hot water, using the packet instructions as a guide, and with a little modification you get a whole range of colours going on. The first yarn was 100% Milton Mill 4 ply/Sport weight yarn. The second set of yarns are little mini skeins of Vintage Purls un-dyed sock yarn (Birthday suit). I am hoping to dye the remaining skein at work in the recently revived Indigo vat, and then set about knitting Ilga's Socks from Favorite Socks. My socks won't be quite the same colours as those in the book - but I like the idea of knitting traditionally styled socks with yarn dyed from natural materials, age old materials. I'm ignoring the inconsistency of the sock yarn having nylon - but darn it, if I'm knitting socks then I'm not planning to darn them any time soon.

Ok, in reality we both know that I'll pop the yarn away as a kit for latter, and who knows how much latter, because I'm knitting up the hand spun next ...
the list of what I want to knit grows ever longer .
how do you all cope with that desire to keep up, and knit it all, and only having 24 hours in the day, 7 days in the week, and so many other things to do (family, food, friends, work, books ..... )?



Take care, knit on till next time, might be one more finished object to report (tease)
Stella