finally another post

steve is away and he took the digital camera with him. before he left i forgot to take photos of stuff i wanted to share. for instance, we dyed more sock yarn last week. i ended up using a total of two colors to get a beautiful, sorta striping sock yarn. steve has a great stash of procion dyes from dharma that he has used for dying clothes. although it's not the best thing for dying wool, it does the job. i picked out two colors: jungle red (i think) and turquoise. we used the two jar method (instead of three) and the middle lump got a watered down version of the turquoise-red mix. i also had a much smaller skein than what is desired for "true" self-striping yarn, but it is nevertheless turning into something really beautiful. pictures of that next time.

i also wanted to mention something that i discovered after arguing with steve about dye safety. i was under the impression that non-food-worthy dyes were really unsafe and that whatever comes in contact with the dye should not be eaten off of, etc. i was being obsessively careful about this when steve got annoyed with me and decided to look up the material data safety sheet. we were using fiber-reactive dyes NOT acid dyes. fiber-reactive dyes in their powder form are not exactly safe (ie, you shouldn't inhale them or eat them and they shouldn't come into contact with your skin). BUT, they are so much safer than acid dyes. even though we have a separate dye pot and all that, i think it's important to mention that fiber-reactive dyes might be a safer alternative to acid dyes and offer better color choices than kool-aid or food dyes.

on another note, i finished some socks for steve out of wildfoote sock yarn in the "zane grey" colorway. pictures to come.