Well, I waited until last night to try this, but I'm glad I did! It was so much fun! I used Knit Picks sock yarn and Kool-aid in Soarin' Strawberry Lemonade, Switchin' Secrets, and a combination of Grape, Black Cherry, and Wild Watermelon Kiwi. The first two were pretty much the colors I had intended, but I was aiming for a brown with the third color which ended up purply. You'll notice a few apparent flaws, but hey, I don't care 'cuz that's how a person learns! Plus I think it will all blend in fine when I knit this into a pair of 'Monkey' socks.
Here is a brief rundown of what I did:
Pic 1 shows the dry hank tied in two places to show me where I wanted the different colors to go.
2. Those are highball size glasses with the kool-aid and water. I used two packs of each on the pink and green, and about 4 packs trying to get the brown. I don't think I used more than half a cup of water per glass. I had the yarn soaking in a big bowl of room temperature water while I mixed the colors.
3. I laid the yarn out on three plates - one section was on each - then I stuffed the sections one by one into the dye glasses, squeezed 'em out, and put them on the plate while I did the other two. The green got laid in the drippings of the purple, hence the muddy looking smudge. Pic three shows the kool-aid soaked yarn in a big microwave-save pasta bowl, which I then put into the microwave for 2 minutes, let rest 3 minutes, nuked it 2 minutes more, let it set 3 more minutes and flipped it over, then nuked it for a final 2 minutes. I knew it was done because a coffee filter pressed against the still damp yarn didn't pick up any color. I let it cool to near room temp, then rinsed it.
4. This pic shows it hanging in my shower to drip dry. I had rolled it up in a towel first and stomped on it to get the extra water out.
5. This shows it on my ball winder!! Don't the colors look different than they did on the unwound hank!
6. This is a mini-swatch, 16 stitches wide. It will be way less stripey on a sock over 60 stitches and more varigated.
I have a hank of lace weight yarn I want to dye moss green. Anybody know how to get that with Kool-aid?? Any ideas?? Really, 'cuz I don't know!! I'm thinking of trying to mix two shades of green and maybe throw in a teabag or two. I just do not want it to turn out lemon-lime neon, but more of a mossy sage instead.
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6 comments:
That sock yarn is great. I like the purply color just as much as I would have liked the brown. I am not sure how to get a mossy green with Koolaid, but you can also dye wool with Wilton Cake decorating dyes. They pretty much work the same way as the Koolaid does and have more specific colors.
Oh that looks so fun, and it turned out SO nice! Great colors! I have never done this so I have no ideas, but at least I know that this must be something I will try later.
The yarn looks fabulous! Thanks for the yarn dyeing tips.. I may just have to make this a future project...! ;-)
Thanks also to Knit Back and Fall In It re. the Wilton tip... and Tina, I do suspect if you go with Koolaid it would be hard to come up with the mossy green (unless you tried mixing yellow and green with a little bit of purple? Hmm).
kb
Oh! This looks so good! I want to do koolaid dying and you are just inspiring me even more!
As for mossy green, I don't know if you have seen this chart: http://www.thepiper.com/fiberart/koolaid/colorchart.html
It sort of lets you see how the koolaid colors come out. It looks to me from the right column that if you start with gray yarn instead of totally bare yarn you can get a slightly mossier look.
Good luck!
Thanks Pepper, for sending that link! I spent HOURS Saturday morning trying to find that dang chart; I did have it bookmarked, but I don't know it if moved or if I had one of the other resolutions marked or what. So I added it to the side bar and this time I had the sense to actually save the picture of that chart to my computer!! Thanks soooo much!
And I think you are right! The lemon-lime actually looks right dyed over the darker yarn! I'll try that!!
Tina, this is so impressive and very pretty! I love that you even knit it into a swatch. It's nice to see how it knits up, not many people do that right away and I'm a very visual person. I need to see it...like now. LOL! Wonderful job on the dyeing and the tutorial!
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