fire-bellied toad

In the interest of full disclosure (encouraged by dear Julie) I must let you all know that while I mess around with dye and yarn, my laundry is languishing, the bathrooms are science projects, and we ate on paper plates last night. There. I feel somehow lighter. It's amazing what confession will do for the soul.

This toad was Middle Brother's Christmas present. His name is Hopper. Taking a picture of the aborted Trekking sock with Hopper made me want to dye some green yarn (plus I need some green sock yarn for the Green Sock KAL).


I gave myself Knit Picks' handily packaged "Socks Gift Kit" for Christmas so I pulled out the hank of Bare Sock Yarn that came in the kit and tried to dye it green. I used an unbelievable amount of Kool-Aid to try to get a mottled-toady green. A batch of cookies, two packages of tamarind Kool-Aid and six packages of green later, I had this:

I think I'm ready to graduate to real dye--I was trying for a more intense range of colors and if I'm using 8 packages of Kool-aid and still not getting what I want, it's time for the serious stuff. You can't see much from this shot, but I dumped in the emergency package of evening blue Rit dye that I've had in my cupboard for about 10 years.

The end result is a little more blue than I had originally envisioned, but I'm SO PLEASED! Now I just have to find the right sock pattern for it.