Madge, I Soaked In It!!

I'm the charter member of the Blue Mom Group. Yuck. We did some tye-dyeing yesterday and my fingers took a beating. We were shooting for orange and maroon shirts for the game (the blue was from something else, just fyi) and here is the post-dyed, pre-uncoiled state:

It sure appeared that it was going to be Hokie colored from this point. We each did a t-shirt and socks and I got really excited to do the rinse and wash phase of this shenanigan. I was having these grand visions of the Things all in their matching shirts at the game and I was just plain giddy. Well, the socks did not really WANT to be orange and maroon:

No, it is not your monitor-they are pink and purple. Really. Not sure what quite went on with the little interaction between the fabric and the dye-good thing I have lots of little girls around these parts!! The Things were thrilled so that ended up being a happy little accident. However, now I was worried because Thing 2 chose her white Little Hokie t-shirt to dye and I thought, "uh oh, that will NOT look good pink and purple!" It actually turned out ok but the maroon ended up a little purple:

All the other shirts turned out the same purplish maroonish weirdish color and dark orange which was as good as we were going to get so I figured I'd go ahead and wash them and dry them so the girls could see the final product. They are currently in their SECOND go around in the washer as the first time they came out orange, a significantly faded purplish maroonish weirdish color, and.......light salmon. White is gone. It's not so good looking. They are in now with some color safe bleach and we'll see what happens. I admit-I do not have high hopes for them to become stunning Hokie apparel. Do you ever have those projects that just start out one way in your mind-usually in this way: "ooh! how fun! what a crafting adventure! this is going to be GREAT!!" so you set merrily about your project and they turn out this way:....5 days into the "1/2 hour" project, "WHY?! why do you hate me?! what did I do WRONG?! maybe if I just wash/knit/paint/stitch it again one more time it will work, right???(2 more days later......)!#$% bleeping bleepity piece of trash!" That happens to me a lot, um, every once in a while, too.

But I DO have one picture of some finished knitting for a change! Here are the Jitterbug socks modeled by Thing 2 who said "can you hurry up and take the picture? these things are itching me really bad!" She has inherited my "love" of wool socks-as much as I like to look at them and I like to knit them and I WANT to wear them, I cannot very often because they are just too itchy, even with nice wool. (Although, just fyi, I did wear these all day the other day and they were not too bad overall in the world of itchyness) Well, of to check the washing machine again-wish me luck!


PS-any ideas how to get this stuff off my hands????!!