Dying in the Rain

It rained most of last week, so on Friday I tried dying yarn for the first time. Actually, it was my first attempt at dying anything.

When I first got the book, Socks Socks Socks I was interested in the pair which had been made with yarn dyed in Kool_Aid. I kept this in the (very) back of my mind as something to try one day. My interest was rekindled when a local place was offering a class and when the class didn't pan out I decided to go ahead and try on my own. After all there are plenty of tutorials on the web.

I had purchased Kool-Aid when I saw it on sale, one packet of each flavour. But I needed yarn.



Now I was ready to go.

First the yarn had to be wound from a ball into a hank. This wasn't difficult with a chair and a willing helper.





After tying the yarn in a few places with cotton crochet thread, I soaked it in soapy water and rinsed and thought what colour(s) I wanted the yarn to become. Although it was my first attempt, I didn't want one colour, so I dived right in and went for three - Strawberry, Strawberry Kiwi and Grape.



I didn't use much water with the drink mix and I had squeezed most of the water out of the yarn so when I poured the mix onto the yarn it looked like this.



So after putting it in the microwave safe dish I added water which made the Kool-Aid spread through the yarn. The yarn was zapped in the microwave for two minutes with a two minute break in between. I think I did this three times and the water was clear.



Remember I'm doing this because the weather is horrible? I had to hang the hank in my bathroom to dry but I did put it outside on Saturday to finish off and to blow away some of the grape smell.



On Monday I rewound it into a bigger hank and skeined.




This wasn't my only adventure with dying. I also dyed some other wool with Wilton's icing colours. I loved the results of that which I will show another day.