Kool-Aid Dying Attempt #1

Last summer FAB and I took a yarn dying class at Kraemer Yarns in Nazareth, PA. We each dyed two skeins of yarn:


FAB's skeins are on the left, mine are on the right. We had a lot of fun that day and both were bitten by the yarn dying bug. I'm not sure if FAB has dyed any more yarn as I haven't seen any pictures (hint, hint, hint). I did purchase some bare yarn from Knit Picks but have yet to dye any of it.

A few months ago (I think there was still snow on the ground) I took a skein of the Bare Sock Yarn and wound it into a cake then taking an end from the middle and an end from the outside and crocheted my own blank. I think I used a size J hook and single crocheted 25 stitches across, turned and single crocheted 25 stitches back until I ran out of yarn.

Until today!!

First things first:


I covered my wood counter top with a heavy duty lawn & leaf bag and secured the edges with blue tape (I love blue tape!).Then I got out my 9" x 9" Pyrex baking dish and put my yarn blank inside with some cold water.


I let the yarn soak for about 20 minutes. Then I poured out the water and gently squeezed out any excess water. I left enough water so that it was still quite moist but not dripping wet. Then I placed it back in the 9" x 9" Pyrex baking dish. My vision for this dying attempt was to make darker areas and lighter areas. So I mixed two packets of Cherry Kool-Aid and approximately 4 tablespoons of water to make a dark concentrate in a glass jar.


Then using a metal spoon I sprinkled about half of the concentrate onto one side of the yarn.

Then, with a rubber glove on I flipped the yarn in the baking dish:


Then sprinkled the remaining concentrate on the other side of the yarn:


I let the yarn sit for a bit because I wanted the concentrated color to really soak into the yarn. I mixed 2 more packages of Cherry Kool-Aid in a mason jar and filled it with water and poured the mix onto the yarn and added more water until the majority of the yarn was covered.

I placed the dish with the yarn into the microwave and cooked it for 2 minutes.

When I took it out and checked the water to see how clear it was I found out that 99% of the dye had been soaked up by the yarn.

From what I have culled from various sources about how to dye yarn, you cook the yarn for 2 minutes - let the mixture rest for a few minutes and then cook it for another 2 minutes until the majority of the dye has been soaked up. In my little experiment this happened just after the first 2 minute cooking time.
At this point I took the yarn (after it had cooled from being zapped in the microwave) to the sink and rinsed the heck out of it. I was still getting some red in the water I was rinsing out of the yarn so I decided to leave it wet (but not dripping) and put it back into the pyrex dish and microwaved it for another 2 minutes. After it had cooled and I rinsed it again I didn't get any color out of the water when I rinsed it.


Now all I have to do is wait for it to dry. I hug it up in my shower over 2 hangers and put a fan on it to speed up the drying time.


It will probably be dry and ready to knit with tomorrow.

Overall I am pretty satisfied with my results, thus far. I'll save my final judgment for after I knit with it. I have knit with hand dyed yarns before and how they look in a skein can be quite different than after it's been knit or crocheted with.

Now, I'm going to go play with a skein of yarn that is still in one big loop. I'm thinking of tying some yarn around some sections so that the yarn under that section won't get much if any dye on it. Maybe I'll use Black Cherry Kool-Aid this time . . .


Edited to add: I would NOT SUGGEST that you crochet two strands of this sock yarn together as I did in this first experiment. It took me HOURS to un-ravel it. It knotted up and fuzzed A LOT and was a major pain. I won't be doing that part of this process again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .

It's JUNE - I KNOW! I would really like to post soon. Actually I'm gonna plan on posting soon. Lots of things have happened since JANUARY - a lot of good and some not so good. Give me a week ok? Luv, Reese

New Year's Resolutions . . . maybe not . . .

I haven't checked . . . but I may not have actually typed into this blog . . . but sometime about this time a year ago I told myself that I wanted to blog daily . . . even if it was just to say that it was raining instead of snowing or that LJ said something funny (which is usually a daily event). This year is going to be different. I don't think that I'll say that I'll post daily because there are very few things that I do every single day unless forced to (don't think I could go a whole day without going to the bathroom). But I will say that I WANT to post at least weekly - that being said I want to go no more than 7 days between posts. Sometimes that might be that I post every day and other times there may be a gap of 7 days between posts but I'm going to try really hard not to let it go more than the 7 days.

I've been thinking a lot the last few days about what I want my New Year's Resolution will be. I've come up with a few but knowing myself they will all have been thrown out the window by the end of January. Some of them include to stop picking at my toes (I'll spare you the gory details of that one), to stop biting my cuticles (I gave up biting my nails years ago but that was only because I began to bite my cuticles instead)- I've even gone so far as to pick at my cuticles with tweezers. I also thought of putting myself on a yarn diet but that just isn't going to happen. No matter how hard I try - I WILL come up with a plan to buy yarn so that it doesn't count against my yarn diet, I'm cleaver like that.

One resolution that I really really really do want to keep/accomplish this year is to clean out and organize my "front room". This is what used to be the front porch of my house that the previous owner enclosed to extend the inside living room space. I have been living in this house for 5+ years and there are still boxes of of stuff out there that haven't been fully unpacked yet. Notice I said unpacked - they have been gone through and rearranged and what not and a few things taken here and there but they have never been fully unpacked. Hubby keeps threatning to get a dumpster and just throw it all out as if we haven't used it in the 5+ years we've lived here then what the hell do we need it for???? He's right, he's so right but I just can't bare to just throw it out. I know that there are things out there that I want, things that have sentimental value to me and things that one day I just might NEED!!! This brings me to a new show that we've been watching called Horders on A&E. I don't want to become a hoarder. So, my resolution this year is to clean out the front room and get rid of stuff I don't want or need anymore or things that I've been holding on to because I just might need it someday. It's been 5+ years - it's time to let go - they are just things.

So there you have it. I am making 2 resolutions this year:

#1: Blog a lot more often.

#2: Clean out and organize my front room.

and I'm going to add one more:

#3: Use up as much of my stash as possible instead of buying new yarn. There I said it.

Happy New Year!!!!!!