In preparation

We’re taking a trip to Japan in a couple of months and my sister is graciously letting us stay with her.  She’s also been great with suggestions of things to do.  The best part is we’ll get to partake of her sushi equity and the sushi chef has even offered to take us with him to his fish market.

So, because she liked the other 2 pairs of socks I’ve knit for her, I thought another pair would serve as a good thank you gift.  The last 2 pairs were just plain vanilla socks.  This time I wanted to do something a little more exciting, and I settled on Cookie A.’s Monkey pattern.  The yarn I’m using is ShubuiKnits Sock in the Rappongi colorway.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I found out they had a colorway called Rappongi as both my sister and the Husband have told me of drinking trips to the Rappongi district.  I remember something about heading home on the trains as business people are heading into work.  The colors are eye-searing pink and orange, and my sister told me she loves it.

I’m just glad that I’ve started well enough in advance that I shouldn’t be rushing to finish them before our trip.

An experiment with food coloring

I had a skein of NZ Romney that I had spun up when I first got my wheel several months ago. Since it was the test skein for my wheel, I decided it should continue to meet its fate as a guinea pig. Thus, it was chosen as the test skein for dyeing with food coloring in my microwave.

The Results:

I left it in twisted skein form and half-submerged it in “dusty pink”… at least that’s the color the box of neon food coloring said I should get with the ratio of drops I used. When I was done with the one side, the skein was flipped and half submerged in “sky blue”… again the color according to the box. The purple, of course, came from the mixing of the two colors. Here and there, you can still see a little of the light grey the skein started out as.