Drawing a blank

Thanks to a massive miscalculation of other people's wants, I was left with five sock blanks on my hands in March, which had cost me £10 each plus postage These are single thread blanks. I identified the top end first (it doesn't undo from the bottom at ends of rows), and put four together in two pairs for dyeing, with the aim of getting roughly matching socks. Didn't want to be rewinding from inside then outside then getting lost where I was. I found I still had Procion Dyes from waaaaay back, even though I have now got rid of all my natural dyestuffs except for a bag of madder. Procion is ideal for this. There wasn't enough citric acid for the whole lot, but Googling showed I could use white vinegar as the fixative. One pair red, yellow, blue. This has provided enough to make one pair blue, one pair red, and just squeezed out a pair of handwarmers from the leftovers of each, red migrating to limey yellow. One pair red yellow brown, speckly. Last black small spots of red down one side, blue the other, leaving a lot of white - knitted up speckled. Also had a skein of undyed - that came out lime green with aubergine, not quite what I intended! Very little white left in this one, and had to re-wind to make it spiral. If I ever get round to doing it again : A good big single sheet of thick polythene, lots of newspaper, and don't try to flatten clingfilm on worksurface first. Squeeze blanks as dry as possible. Use weights, pegs, whatever, to flatten the blanks out fully to get right to the edges. Mix colours and gets strengths much weaker for paler colours. Consider flecks of dry dyestuff then using a water spray over them.