Dyeing yarn with Koolaid - my experience
Remember to wear gloves!!!!!
JoeUser Forums
I've been wanting to try to dye my own yarn for ages, and I decided that yesterday was the day to do it.
I bought some white merino wool at the craft store and some packets of cherry and grape Koolaid at the grocery store. I wound the yarn around two dining chairs and then tied off where I wanted the colors to be with some darker acrylic yarn (acrylic won't take dye; it has to be animal fiber like wool or alpaca or angora). I wanted my yarn to be self-striping and whilst I was supposed to measure the size of the garment and do the math to get a perfect stripe pattern I decided to just wing it and see what happened.
First, I put filled my canning pot with enough water to come up to the necks of the jars I was going to use for the dye and put it on the stove to boil. Whilst it was warming I soaked the yarn in warm water and mixed up 2 packets of each color in three jars. I could have used 1 packet, but I wanted to make sure I got nice bright colors so I used two.
Once the water in the pot was boiling, I dropped the jars into the water and then squeezed the water out of the yarn and dropped it into the jars:
When I was sure that I had adequate saturation, I turned the burner off and then...I left the house. I knew that if I stayed I'd just go in there and poke at the yarn and maybe cause it to start to felt - contrary to popular belief, it's not heat that causes wool to shrink (aka felt), it's the agitation that causes felting and shrinkage. Once yarn is felted, there's nothing you can do about it.
I had read that you could tell when your dyeing process was complete because the water in the jars would turn clear or slightly milky. The whole time I was away from home I had my fingers crossed that when I returned the water would indeed be milky/clear, but had this sneaking feeling that I would have fucked the process up somehow and would return to find a big mess of Koolaid and yarn.
When I came home an hour later, I look in the pot and found......that the water in the jars was clear!!!!! Success!!!! I pulled the jars out of the water and set them in the sink:
You can see the milkiness better here:
After I had taken the yarn out of the jars (the dye was set by the heat so it was ok to let the different colors touch) I rinsed it thoroughly and then washed it and rinsed it again (all the time being careful not to agitate it because of the felting risk). I then hung it on a hanger to dry:
This morning I wound it into a ball - I tried to put it into a hank, but that's hard to do with 2 dogs who just HAVE to be involved in whatever I'm doing. I'll hank it tonight and post a photo so you can see what it looks like.
Whilst it didn't come out EXACTLY as I wanted, I am very happy with the results. I have 230 yards of hand-dyed wool and I paid a total of $5.50 for it - and if you know anything about yarn and it's prices, you'll understand what a bargain that is!
This is not going to be my only attempt at yarn dyeing. This hold so many possibilities; I can make custom colors and stripes and variegations. No, this is not the end of my yarn dyeing experience...this is just the beginning!
