Bad Karma for Dye-O-Rama

It's the last day of DYE-O-RAMA and just on spot I sent out my yarn today. I planned to do so earlier because it has to travel a long distance - but the obstacles!
I meantioned the Kool-aid desaster. The sachets I bought on ebay where almost confiscated by custom officials here. I still don't know excactly what the problem was. Okay, they made a funny noise in the envelope. Anthrax, drugs? The concern of protecting Icelandic children from funny-coloured pooh? Anyway, just before last weekend, the Kool-Aid made it to my doorstep and so did the undyed yarn.
My pal stated she would be very happy with sef-striping yarn but not in the same colour way. Sigh.. not that easy with the selection I got here.

or like this

I was surprised to find out that even when dyeing only a part of a skein, there was not nearly enough colour in one sachet to dye the yarn in saturated colours or at least evenly. Loads of white spots all over the place. Could it be that the superwash quality of my yarn caused this effect? But if, why not in the sample threads? Furthermore in contrast to this theory is the black cherry result. It is fabulously red and juicy but therefore doesn't fit to the other colours/stripes. [double sigh]
To make a long and desperate story short, I will better show you the results. [shiver]

This tangled mess reminds me painfully of batik print. The style of blouses my more alternative teachers liked to wear around the time, trendsetter or fashion victim Nena was attending singing lessons in the humble premisies that were also my elementary school.

As mentioned before, I like the black cherry red, but the rest? I was/am not in the mental condition yet to try any over-dying yet. Rest in peace, little skein.

Next was the plan to create a midnightsun colourway.
That was before I found out that I don't really have orange because Tropical something was more brownish than orange. And one of the blues was not as dark blue as hoped for either... And what is the green doing there anyway?

In the end, the combination blue-green-purple is not that horrible in my opinion (which might have to do with all the handling, rewinding and the ability to aquire taste after all). Also, the yarn, Trekking, is very nice. BUT, idiot as I am, I wrapped the yarn in a wrong way! The green stripes are only in the first (or last) half of the skein, the rest is only blue and purple. Lesson learned!

Last attempt was strawberry/apple striped yarn (Take strawberry and apple colours and rack your brain to not include the word strawberry in the name for the colourway!) The result looked again kind of unpleasant in the skein with all the undyed white spots. Desperately, I decided to knit a swatch and lo and behold it is not that bad. I even like how it looks now but I kind of have to. I can imagine it being a fresh and girly Jaywalker for example.

I am afraid, however, that it is not according to my pals colour preferences. But then, she said she is open to anything and I really did my best. No yarn, no colour left for another attempt and I am afraid, I couldn't do better/try harder anyway :-(

To add some cuteness factor to this post I'll give you some kittens I visited over the weekend. Friends of me seem to really enjoy upgrading their family. Not long ago, they had a daughter (who is already grown out of this sweater [scroll down]). Now they are into breeding Norwegian Forest cats and those cuties are only two weeks old.

Say with me: AAHH!