Thursday, July 22, 2010

Experiments in Kool-Aid Dyeing

Today I spent some time playing with dyeing. Ignore the name tags as I was doing some HP homework for a Ravelry group called Hogwarts Little Bit of Everything Swap (Ravelry Link).

I found a tutorial on-line that uses a crock pot. So here is what I dyed. I believe it is Cascade wool. Maybe half a skein at the most. Plus I used Lemonade and Cherry flavored Kool-Aid.

First I started out by soaking the yarn in a crock pot with water and a little bit of vinegar. I set the crock pot on low, put the cover back on, and let it sit for about 15 minutes.

Then I covered half the yarn with 1 packet of cherry and the other half with 2 packets of lemonade. All I did was sprinkle the Kool-Aid straight from the package into the pot. There are some spots were the two colors blended but that was just fine as it made a pretty shade of orange.

Once the water was clear, I used a spoon to turn the yarn over so the un-dyed yarn was exposed. I then used another packet of Cherry and 2 more packets of Lemonade.

Once the dyeing was complete, I turned off the crock pot and let it sit to cool for a little while. Then I placed the yarn in a colander and let it sit in the sink until completely cool. The yarn was then rinsed and then squeezed the water out. I then used a towel to get out the extra water in the yarn. The yarn was then hung up on a hanger and placed outside for drying.


And here is the final result... a lovely skein of yarn that I have decided to name "Tequila Sunrise". I might have to make a full skein like this.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Very nice! i have not tried koolaid dyeing myself, but have used wilton's cake dye. It's fun to experiment, but feel like I should leave dyeing to the professionals because it's time consuming!

Sara said...

Ooh, very nice! :)

Bobbie Wallace said...

Good tutorial! I just may have to try that with my old crockpot!

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