Kool Kolors

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I decided to play around with some Kool Aid and yarn. We divided an eight ounce skein of Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool yarn into two skeins and got started.

I wanted a solid blue yarn. My daughter decided to go for multi colored yarn. She mixed colors in three different jars, yellow, green and blue/green and set them into a large pot of water. Each color was customized by mixing various flavors. She carefully placed sections of the yarn into the jars. She dipped the in-between sections into color for short periods of time and moved it around to give gradual change to the colors and avoid white sections.


We cooked our yarn until all the color was gone and then a little longer to set it. We then turned the stove off and let our yarn skeins cool before washing and rinsing them. Sudden temperature changes could lead to felting and we wanted to avoid that. It's so cool how all the color gets absorbed into the yarn. I'm not sure why the water becomes white/milky though.


I had planned to make a darker, more denim type of blue but wasn't able to find the flavor I needed. This turquoise is very pretty though.


My daughter's yarn turned out gorgeous! She had so much fun and was so excited to see that it turned out exactly as she had hoped.


Such pretty colors...


We just couldn't stop taking pictures of it...






Even Duchess likes it...well...maybe not the colors, but she liked how it moved as we wound it into a ball.


Gorgeous!


We can see how dying yarn could be addicting! We're already thinking of more colors and combinations we want to try. Kool!

Cherry Sheep

What do you get when you mix fruity scented Kool Aid and wool yarn? Something that smells really weird...like cherry sheep! It's not a good combination!


But, you also get some pretty yarn...


I played around with Kool Aid dying last weekend for the first time. I've seen yarn dyed this way by fellow knitters for a couple years now. I'm not sure what took me so long to try it. It's easy, quick, cheap and fun!

I found some directions on Knitty. For yarn, I used an eight ounce skein of Lyon Brand Fisherman's Wool in the natural color. I split it into two four ounce skeins, tied them, washed, rinsed and soaked them. Meanwhile, I mixed 3 packages of black cherry Kool aid, 1 cherry, 1 pink lemonade, and 2 lemonade in a pot with some water. I placed the yarn in the pot, added water to cover the yarn (although, it kind of floated), turned on the heat, stirred and pressed the yarn down occasionally, and let it cook until it was almost boiling and the water was clear. That was the amazing part...the water became CLEAR! From deep, dark, red to clear! At that point, I turned off the heat, allowed it to cool down and washed and rinsed it in water that was the same temperature so I wouldn't shock and felt it. Then, I squeezed out the water and hung the yarn to dry.

The directions called for one package of Kool Aid for each ounce of yarn. Being the stubborn person that I am, I only used seven packages for my eight ounces of yarn and it turned out a lot lighter than I had hoped. But, it is very pretty. It has some variation in it too. Some of that might be from the skeins being thick and the color not getting all the way into the sections that were tied (even though they were kind of loose). I'm not sure about the extra dark parts or how to avoid that next time. I'm hoping the variation will add to the "prettiness" factor when it's knitted up.

I'm excited to try this again. There are so many possibilities!