Kool-aid Yarn Dyeing

I may have mentioned that I took a class at Hillcreek Yarn Shoppe in Columbia a couple of weeks ago.  Great class ! ! !   Look what I did - - - - - -   this is Berry Blue                                                                                                                                      

I came home with a skein of the wool/mohair yarn to try my hand at home.  In the meantime, I picked up some Fisherman’s Wool from Hobby Lobby and  more packets of Kool-aid.

The yarn needs to be thoroughly wet so that all the fibers will have an equal opportunity to soak up the dye in the Kool-aid.  Then I gently squeezed out the the excess and blotted with a bath towel.

Ready for prep – I used ten packets of the Orange  Kool- aid for approx 100 gms of the Fishermen’s Wool

 

I want to make certain that all the powder is dissolved before I immersed the damp yarn

 

I made sure the yarn to covered with the dye-water [well as best I could]

 

You can see that the Kool-aid was pretty darn orange - - can’t see my gloved fingers.  I swirled the yarn around gently so as not to ‘felt’ it.  After several minutes you can see that the water is becoming less orange.  However, the interesting thing about the Orange in comparison to the Berry Blue is that the BB turned clear while the Orange lost it’s orange and left a milky solution.  Hmmmmmm. You’ll see in a minute.

 

Then it was time to nuke it in the microwave enough to set the dye but not to felt it. 

 

I used  two-minute increments.  In between I let it sit for approx five minutes between nuke cycles then repeated until the water felt pretty darn warm to my gloved finger.

 

See what I mean about the color of the water when all the dye had been absorbed?  Milky.  I drained off the liquid and waited until the yarn cooled and then thoroughly rinse ‘til the water ran clear.     

                                                                                                                              

I gently squeezed the water out, rolled in bath towel to rid it of any remaining water -  laid it out on the table to dry.                                                                                                                                     

Wound it into a yarn cake and added it to my new stash of Kool-aid dyed yarn.

The Lemon-Lime beckoned . . .   -- -- --  . . .