Caleb's socks, Part I

This weekend, Caleb and I started a sock project for him. I thought it might be a good idea if he took some wool through the dying, spinning, and knitting to a pair of socks, so he understands how clothing used to be made all the time. I figured he might learn something and it would be something different to do together. So this weekend, we got started. He decided he wanted green and blue and white socks, so I pulled out some GCNI that I had had blended with mohair specifically for socks. I have a creamy white and a pale grey (does this sound familiar Denise?) and he agreed that we should dye the pale grey into the blue and green and use the white wool for the white in the socks. After weighing some wool socks of his to find out how much we would need, we pulled out 1 ounce of white and 2 ounces of the grey. This will be plenty for his little socks. You can just barely tell that the grey is darker than the white. So, we dyed half of the grey wool blue (Wilton's Royal Blue with a touch of Copper to tone it down) and the other half green (Wilton's Juniper Green with some Royal Blue added to make it a slightly bluer green - Juniper green is a very brown, olive green and the dye breaks into the olive and browns. It would do great camo yarn if that's what you're looking for.) Even with the Royal Blue added to the Juniper Green, the browns still broke out of the dye. I love how the green wool came out looking like trees. At this point I was a little afraid that the blue was still too bright, even with the added Copper dye (Copper dyes a bright orange, orange being the complement to blue will tone the color down). So, I took a little bit of each of the three colors, drafted them together - which is how I plan to spin this yarn - and look at what I got: This is just spun fast and dirty, not really paying attention to consistant yarn size. I was more concerned with how the colors worked together. Isn't it beautiful? It reminds me of a reflection of trees and a blue sky with fluffy clouds on a mountain lake (maybe I've been reading too many descriptions of hand dyed yarn colorways lately). I think it will make nice socks and most importantly, Caleb likes it. I've got to finish spinning the Falkland Top for the sweater before I spin his sock yarn up, but I can't wait to do it!