Sunday, July 03, 2005

Kool-Aid Dyeing

Well. The dyeing experience is over (for now), and it was so much fun. Seriously. And this post? Lots of pictures. Seriously.

Up first: all of the yarn got wound into hanks around the back of a desk chair. That was fun, for awhile.

Wind Wind Wind

I can't express to you how long this took. I did a decent job of making the hanks even; they're approximately 2 ounces each. Then I soaked the yarn as my guide (Julie's post about dyeing yarn) suggested. You can see the yarn soaking in the corner of the next picture, which is mostly a picture of my lovely Kool-Aid dyes.

Bowls of Dye

That's essentially all of the counter space that exists in my apartment... again, seriously. FYI, each of those bowls held 2 packets of the selected color, slightly less than 2 tablespoons of white vinegar (I didn't want to run out), and 1 cup of warm water. Each set of three bowls was enough for 3-2 oz. skeins of yarn.

At this point, I realized that the picture of my dye looked an awful lot like another picture I have... sorry for the slow loads, but this one's got a lot of good memories with it.

Chinese Dumplings

That's a picture of the dumplings I learned to make when I was in China last summer. Do the pictures look similar to anyone else? I thought it was strange.

Anyway, I forgot to get any sort of turkey baster type utensil at the grocery store, so I used 1/4 cup measures to pour dye onto my yarn. It worked really well for my purposes, and my pie plate was the perfect size for a plastic-wrapped packet of yarn. Fortunately I have lots of pie plates, and they all fit in my tiny college student's apartment sized microwave.

Here's a shot of the yarn drying in my shower... there's lots of yarn in there.

Drying Yarn

It's still in the shower, as I didn't finish until 1:20 in the morning, but it's almost all dry now. I think some of the thicker hanks have a bit of dampness at the bottoms, but they'll have to hurry up, as I need to take a shower!

Also as an FYI, the solid blues in the picture were a combination of 1 packet Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade and 1 packet of Berry Blast mixed together in 1 c warm water with 2 Tbsp white vinegar.

A mini-hank that I dyed Lemon-Lime for accent stitching dried quickly, and I've already wound it up. I stuck some undyed Fishermen's Wool in with it, to show the change.

Kool-Aid Green

Now, isn't that pretty? As a side comment, I thought the wet wool (when it was soaking) smelled a lot like damp chewing tobacco (eeew, right?), but the Kool-Aid smelled great despite the vinegar! And now that my first dyeing experiment is over, it's nearly time to jump into a felting experiment, as that's what all of this wool is for!

7 Comments:

Blogger Deneen said...

Looks great! I have yet to try it because I don't know what I'm doing!

5:08 PM  
Blogger Rebecca said...

looks like you did a great job!!! love the color choices :)
next time, for bright bright colors, try Wilton's food dye for icings :)

9:28 AM  
Blogger Jewels said...

Your yarn looks beautiful!! Can't wait to see the bag you make with it, the colors will work so pretty. You make me want to try dying now.

10:10 PM  
Blogger Jewels said...

update update - I bought 6 packs of 3 different colors koolaid today. yayyyy

8:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love the colors. Everything came out beautifully.

7:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great job with the dye project--your results inspire me to try dying...or die trying. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Wonderful color selections!

4:09 PM  
Blogger Catana said...

Just to say Hi and tell you I responded to your comment on my blog. It looks as if we have the same problems when it comes to dyeing--no counter space and not much of anything else. My bathtub is always draped with washed recycled yarn, recycled fabrics, or dyed yarn. But it's fun.

5:42 PM  

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