Well, the tea stained sox will occupy my mind and time no more. I did what I did, and am eager to go on to something else.

I got good information from folks on line, and then I chose actions based on the supplies easily available to me. I soaked them in Biz, washed, they were only slightly better. Soaked them in Bix again, pre-treated with a stain remover called Tech, which said it could get out cola and coffee (I was hoping that meant tea also), washed on hot in the washer, and they still came out as you see them here in the “before” picture.

I decided enough was enough. The next move is sort of amusing. I tried to overdye them with tea, the same tea as the stain came from. I made a nice big pan of tea (wasting two gorgeous teabags I would much rather have sipped than used for staining), and soaked them for almost an hour. And guess what: Almost no stain! Go figure! I had thought I could sort of even out the brown before overdyeing but it did not work at all.

So then, I got out my trusty acid dyes, mixed a little here and there for good luck, and overdyed the sox with the turquoise. If you are curious about overdyeing finished knit items, I highly recommend Sally Melville’s book “Styles” for a wonderful discussion on color and overdyeing. She likes much more subtle colors than I do (she loves brown, I am nearly allergic to brown) but her writing is clear and the concepts are wonderfully explained. She shows a sweater or two which were knit from odds and ends of truly clashing colors, and when the garment is overdyed it looks wonderful. She shows several samples of overdyeing with different colors, and it’s a great book just for that chapter alone. Sally is wonderful at bringing out creativity. If you ever get a chance to take a class from her, make sure you do it!

So, as you see, now I have sox which are just fine, and which barely show the stain. When they are slouched around my ankles, nobody will think it’s anything but a shadow making the colors look that way. And I think I’ll get plenty of wear out of the things, as I definitely needed more turquoise sox. Maybe since these are a bit more subdued, I may actually get a little more use out of them. That will just require time to determine, because I do tend to wear wild colors often.

I’m still babying an allergy headache so I’m off to take a long hot bath and have a nice bowl of soup. It is nice to have the sun shine for yet another day, and the temperature was almost 58 when Brian went to work today at about 10:30. So if I can put the headache to bed, it promises to be a fabulous day. In any case, I get to teach knitting to my CityKidz again!!!

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