Lucky Socks?

It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that I needed some St. Patrick's Day socks. That's right. Needed. This was not a want. So I went looking for St. Patrick's Day yarn. Now, you may have noticed that I'm kinda picky about colors (hey, I'm female, I'm picky about a lot of things). St. Patrick's Day Green is dangerously close to a line that divides Colors I Wear from Colors I Don't Wear so you can imagine what it was like when I was shopping for St. Patrick's Day Green Yarn. Too bright. Too stripey. Too dark. Too yellow. Too blue. Too pink. Oh, wait, I'm not looking at greens anymore. Finally it dawned on me - I had already found the perfect green: Easter Egg dye pellet green! Last year I dyed some roving with the Easter Egg Dye Pellets* and got this wonderful green. It was Brazilian Emerald or a soft Kelly green. It evoked images of leprechauns (that's a hard word to spell by the way) on misty hills rather than crazy Americans with clovers painted on their faces, drinking green beer.

So, out came another skein of KnitPicks Color Your Own Fingering Weight (I really am running out of this stuff now - I should start ordering it by the case), 5 pellets of green went into the Big Pot O' Dye with some water and vinegar. I added the yarn and cooked it for an hour or so and got the glorious color you see above.

Then I had to choose a pattern. Obviously it had to have something to do with St. Patrick's Day or Ireland or, well you understand. Right there in Barbara Walker's First Book of Really Great Knitting Patterns For All Occasions - Cloverleaf Eyelet Rib! I added a couple more stitches in the purl sections to make it an 8 stitch repeat and topped it with 17 rounds (get it?) of K1P1 ribbing and soon I'll have some St. Patrick's Day Socks!

*I used the PAAS brand Easter Egg Dye Pellets and of the original 6 colors, purple seems to be a little unstable - fading randomly to blue. The 3 new colors they added last year: Pink, Lime, and turquoise, seem to be very unstable. The color didn't hold on either the eggs or wool. I haven't seen this year's egg dye packs yet so I don't know if they have the new colors in them or not and of course they might have done the dye differently, but I thought I'd mention it to anyone who is thinking about doing some Easter Egg Yarn!