It's Magic

Opal Magic, that is. The Opal Chatters Newsletter sponsored an Easter Egg hunt in April, and I won a skein of yarn. My very first Opal - how exciting! Using the Mermaid sock from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks Warm Feet, I knit a cuff of about four inches over 72 stitches. From there I did a short row heel over half the stitches, then continued to decrease down to a total of 60 for the foot. Since the pattern stitch spirals, I morphed into a 4x2 rib for the instep, then to plain stockinette about 1/3 of the way to the toe.



As much as I like the looks of the spiral rib, it really eats up the stitches. I had to use 72 instead of my normal 60, and even then it's a little snug. Also seemed to take forever to knit it to four inches. I'm thinking I may save that stitch for smaller socks.

In dyeing news, I've had a colorway in mind for a few weeks now. Green with purple and yellow, inspired by my lawn full of dandelions and violets. I remember a couple of years ago being inspired by the same thing to make a bright set of floral beads.

I broke out some of the Easter Egg dye that Jane got for me, and dyed up a 3 1/2 ounce hank of Wool2Dye4 Superwash Supersock. Here's a picture of the skein. You know, I really like to look of yarn re-skeined after dyeing to show the colors together, but without a swift or niddy-noddy, I just didn't have it in me to do the work just for a picture. I think a swift purchase is in my near future.

After taking the picture, I draped the skein over the back of a chair and using my hand-held winder, made this ==>
(as always, click to biggify)

By now, I'm coasting toward the toe decreases on the first sock, just a simple stockinette on US1 dpns over 60 stitches. I did something a little different at the heel, but I'll go into more detail in the next post. In the meantime, dye on!