Dye-O-Rama--the good and the bad

I will start with the good, the wonderful, the fantastic, the really, really, really COOL stuff. My yarn arrived from my pal, Desdemona . It is beautiful and so perfect! C. is fighting over it with me, as it's all her favorite colors. Here's the pic:
The colors aren't as brilliant as they are in person. It's a denim blue, tealy-kinda green, and deep pink that's almost purple. Scrumptious! (as is the chocolate bar that came with it! lol)

Now before you think that I am slacking off on working on the yarn for MY pal, I want to give some background on what I've done since the beginning of Dye-O-Rama. I signed up on April 22nd and immediately ordered my dye-your-own yarn from KnitPicks. I'd done a variegated yarn for Sockapaloooza, and was pleased with the way that turned out, but I really wanted to learn how to make striped yarn for socks! I found a cool website that showed how to string yarn all over your house to stripe it, but figured that might strangle at least one child... Then I found directions for Scout's Ghetto Warping Board. This, I thought, was the board for me! I ran to Home Depot and bought the materials and told DH that he could make this for my Mother's Day gift. Of course, that meant that I didn't get the board until Mother's Day... So we're already up to May 14th. I immediately do a "dry run" with some cheap Lion Brand Fisherman's wool and three extremely differently colored Wilton food pastes (pink, green, blue). Hmmm...

Other than the green barely showing up at all, it's okay... and knit up, it's definitely stripey!!! :) I learned a few things--namely that, when using the warping board, it wraps down and then back up, so you don't get a regular repeat (A,B,C,A,B,C...) but a palindrome-type repeat (A,B,C,B,A,B,C). I also figured out that, with socks, one loop will be one round, and I think I want wider stripes than that. Not a bad start, though.

So I read my Pal's dye-o-meme-o-rama and find out that she likes peach and aqua shades. I don't own either of these in Wilton food paste, so I head to Michael's to buy some. Luckily, a package exists with both peach AND aqua. I do another trial, using the warping board and Fishermen's wool, and my new Wilton dye. See anything wrong with the colors?In case you can't tell, the peach is fuschia and the aqua is PURPLE??? (the natural actually stayed natural)

And then I heard from my dye pal that she'd sent my yarn and I REALLY panicked.

So I'm falling back on what I know. Today I wrapped (warped?) an entire skein of yarn on my warping board and dyed it with the same three colors that I used for my Sock Pal's socks (brown, moss green and orange). These were listed as colors that my Dye Pal likes, so I hope she accepts my sincerest apologies and likes the brown/green/orange yarn, too.

As soon as the yarn dries, I'll twist it up and try to write a tutorial of sorts for using Scout's Warping Board. I hope that will help some people who were confused as to how to use it. I think it worked really well and I'm excited to twist up the yarn (and to see how it knits up!), but I'm still really annoyed with the peach and aqua... I guess I may have to try some "real" dyes and not just the food types... (addiction....) Oh, well, DH wanted to get some tie dye stuff from Dharma anyway. :)