Yesterday saw the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. During each olympic games, summer and winter, the knitting community joins in with it’s very own version – the Ravellenic Games.  It’s a great opportunity to challenge yourself whilst watching lots and lots of winter sports!  I’m taking part in the Sock Hockey event, it’s become my own tradition to knit a pair of socks each Olympics and this will be my fourth pair (2008 Beijing, 2010 Vancouver, 2012 London).

Last weekend I decided to have a look through my dyeing note book to see if I had the makings of a rainbow.

Dye notebook

Excuse the kitchen in the background!

Luckily, it looked like I had all the recipes necessary to make a rainbow, so after much calculating of percentages, weighing and measuring out small quantities of seven different colours and carefully painting the sections, the yarn was wrapped and in the oven.

It was a tense time waiting for the results. With some of the natural dyes, the final colour only emerges after the yarn and dye has been heated. With Logwood Purple for example the raw dye extract looks red and will only develop the purple colour with time and heat. It’s a nerve wracking and exciting time.  It was worth it in the end, here’s the Rainbow yarn:

Rainbow

There may have been a small chocolatey celebration once the yarn was out of the wrapping!  And then I had to wait until yesterday to start knitting it!  I cast on during the opening ceremony to the strains of some beautiful Russian music from Sochi. And here’s a rough and ready unedited progress shot from this morning: