Too kool

So far, I have resisted two auxiliary knitting activities. Spinning and dyeing. My friend Kristina does both and she has brought her spinning wheel to Knit Night and I have consciously curbed my fascination. Truly, I don't need another hobby, especially with the little one coming soon. I'm trying to save spinning for my old age when the arthritis sets in and I can barely hold my needles anymore. That's what I tell myself, anyway, especially when I am tempted to buy a drop spindle and get Kristina to give me lessons. I've got enough yarn to keep me busy for a long while...I don't need to generate more. Can you see that I've spent time working on resistance techniques?

I haven't really felt the pull toward dyeing my own yarn. Except that I am a total geek and would like some colorways inspired by TV shows I watch, like LOST and BSG. I did buy some KnitPicks Bare in a worsted weight to dye up for a toddler sweater last year. And lately I have felt little nigglings that maybe it's something I want to do soon. I'm not ready to jump in with acid dyes. They are not food safe and any supplies I use with those dyes cannot then be used to cook. They seem to require more thought and preparation and I'm just not there yet, although they may be the only way to get a nice Cylon gray.

Kool-aid dyeing is popular and supposed to be easy, so I joined a big Kool-aid dyeing group on Ravelry (What a Kool Way to Dye) and have spent many hours looking through postings at success stories and reading the links they have regarding technique and color possibilities. Check out this. And this.

My local Tom Thumb does not have much of a color selection. I was able to score black cherry, cherry, tropical punch, strawberry, grape, orange, pink lemonade, and a yellow lemonade that does have yellow dye in it (I've read that some lemonades do not contain any dye except dye lakes and "dye lake" means that the dye is bonded with an opaque molecule and will not work for dyeing purposes...the opaque molecule is what makes powdered lemonade, for instance, look like cloudy "real" lemonade".

No blues. No lemon-lime, which is pretty much the only green variety except for specialty ones that might be out in limited quantities.

So yesterday I went to Kroger and they had all the same stuff except they also had Berry Blue and Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade. So now I have blues and no green. I plan to hit up WalMart and see if they have lemon-lime.

Any drink mix with citric acid and food dye will work, and none of the other brands had blue or green, and I'm set on red and pink right now, so I didn't buy any non-Kool-aid ones. I may eventually hit one of the Mexican grocery stores, though, since they have some different flavors/colors.

Before I went to Kroger, I rummaged through my yarn for stuff to experiment on. Kool-aid only works on animal fibers and nylon. It won't do anything to acrylic and it won't dye color-fast to cellulose (plant) fibers like cotton. So I pulled out a skein of Patons Classic Wool that I had purchased a while ago with a gift in mind and then I changed my mind on the gift and the problem with it is that it is really NOT my colors. I can't even use it to knit hats for The Ships Project because it's pink. All dusty pinks and burgundy and I just don't do mauve. Mauve reminds me of my dorm room circa 1987.

You can't dye a ball of yarn, so I wound it into a hank on my swift and did several very loose figure-8 ties on it with crochet cotton to keep it from getting tangled. Then I soaked it in luke-warm water while I went to Kroger. I forgot to add a detergent to the soak, but that doesn't seem to have hurt anything.

After I got home I let the yarn soak a bit longer and then I mixed up 4 packets of Kool-aid and added it to the crock pot. I was dyeing 3.5 ounces of wool. I decide to go with Tropical Punch because I figured a strong, bright red would really over-ride the mauve thing. then I figured it might be too much dye, so I scooped out some of the Kool-aid mix and replaced it with clear water. So I probably ended up using about 3.5 packets of Kool-aid. You are supposed to use approximately 1 packet of Kool-aid per ounce of yarn, I think.

I stirred it well, turned the crock-pot on high, covered it, and left it. This is why I chose the crock-pot method. minimal mess, minimal fuss. After about 15 minutes, I gently stirred it again because I wanted fairly even results and about 30 minutes after that I stirred it yet again. My kitchen was smelling very tropical punchy. After about another 30-45 minutes I checked on it and the dye had exhausted (the dye had all been sucked up by the yarn). The water was cloudy, but clear, as evidenced by me dipping out a bit to make sure (I have a black crock-pot...not the best for dyeing because it is really hard to see what is going on in there).

I then turned off the crock-pot and let the whole thing cool down. After a few hours, I poured the yarn into a colander and rinsed that in lukewarm water by immersing the colander into a bowl. It's important to not shock wool yarn with drastic temperature changes or it might felt. The yarn bled just a little, which I expected since I used so much Kool-aid. The second rinse was clear and I added a little Eucalan, let that soak a bit, then rinsed again.

I gently squished most of the water out of the yarn and hung the hank over my washing machine with a towel underneath because it was still dripping. I was trying really hard not to felt the yarn by handling it too much while wet.

This morning it was mostly dry and I think tonight I will tackle a skein of Lion Brand Wool that has blue and burgundy stripes (bought on the same ill-fated shopping trip as the first skein). The blue is a weird sort of blue that also reminds me a little too much of 1987, so it is probably getting a cherry treatment.