I've wanted to try dyeing some yarn for several years, but never made the time to do it. I had the book
One Skein that I bought ages ago for a gift and had planned to dye up some yarn to go with it. Problem was, I lost the book and didn't want to give the yarn without it, so I didn't rush to do it. I finally found the book and decided that it was time to jump in. I checked out a couple of posts (
here and
here) on dyeing with Kool-aid, and got the tip to use food coloring, too.
I didn't have a big enough microwave-safe dish, so I just used a pot on the stove. I added vinegar to the water and just let the yarn simmer for a while...
I split an 8 oz. skein of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool into 3 smaller skeins (I used my kitchen scale to weigh out 2.6 oz). Since I had Kool-aid already on hand (purchased a while ago for the project), I started with that. I like how the yarn came out, but the colors were not what I was expecting.
On the left is orange (2 packets used, and it's a little more orange in real life), in the middle is cherry lemonade (2 packets of cherry and then I added 2 packets of lemonade because I thought that it would be too pink) and on the right is tropical punch (2 packets used). I did the tropical punch first and it wasn't as purple as I expected, so I skipped the grape I had been planning to use (I'll just drink it- grape is my favorite flavor!).
When I got an extra week for gift-making due to the weather, I picked up another skein of wool and some Wilton food coloring pastes. I started with the violet and found that I ended up with clumps of dye at the bottom of the pan (and on the yarn), so I pre-dissolved the other colors for the other batches. I also had no idea how much to use, and I used a bit more than I needed for the violet and blue (I had it figured out a bit better by the green). The water in the pot didn't turn clear for these, and I probably should have rinsed the yarn a bit better than I did, because I got a bit of purple on my fingers when I made the hanks. I did let my SIL know that she should probably rinse it before she uses it.
On the left is violet, in the center is delphinium blue (which came out much more purple in some spots and more blue in others) and on the right is moss green (which is my favorite).
I enjoyed it so much, that I picked up some more yarn (thank goodness for 50% off coupons) and 2 more dye colors (royal blue and teal/aqua {I forget what it's called}) so I can play around with some color mixing. I think I'll also try changing the amount of yarn that I dye each batch (I think I'll do 1 oz batches) to see if I can get more uniform color on the yarn. I plan on trying again in a couple of weeks when I have a bit of free time.
