Kool-Aide Dyeing on a Beautiful Spring Day

Carolyn invited Bonnie and I over for a day of lunch, machine knitting discussion and Kool-Aide dyeing.  Lunch was wonderful, but before we ate we got our yarn dyeing.  Carolyn gave me some yarn as I didn't have any wool to dye.  Thought I'd just watch them dye.  It really was a lot of fun to participate.  Her thoughts were to get the yarn wound and tied into hanks.  Add dye and water to the yarn in 1 quart Mason jars.  Then set the jars in her solar oven to make sure they got hot enough.  We all didn't do any reading up on what to do, but we all had a little bit of knowledge and vague memories of doing it in the past.  So, we all went about dyeing our hanks in different ways.

After soaking my hank in a vinegar solution I laid my hank on the lawn (didn't want to mess up Carolyn's kitchen) and I sprinkled a package of Grape Kool-Aide and a package of Ice Blue Berry Lemonade Kool-Aide on both sides of my hank.  I didn't randomly come up with these flavors.  I used a chart on the Dye Your Yarn website.  Then I stuffed it into the Mason jar and added hot water until the jar was full.  Shook it up until I thought all the Kool-Aide was mixed.  It was interesting as the yarn quickly turned purply pink and the water around it was blue.  Very pretty.

Carolyn and Bonnie mixed their colors in water before adding it to the jar with their yarn in it.  They then topped off the colored water with more hot water.  Their color choices were completely different from mine. It was getting very exciting to think about how things were going to turn out with our little experiments.

Carolyn placed all our jars into the solar oven.  We had lunch and talked every thing fiber for several hours before they thought to check on our yarn.  When we peeked in the oven the water around our yarn was clear, so we knew it was done.  We needed hot mitts as the solar oven had gotten up to 200 degrees F.

I drained my jar, rinsed my yarn and hung it to dry on a near by tree.  My yarn came out the most variegated in color.  Probably due to my sprinkling technique.

Bonnie's yarn from the left was purple and the next hank a beautiful tan with yellowish highlights.  She had a little bit of variegating.  Carolyn's roving on the right was a mint green color.  Sorry the sun wasn't helping with the photographing.  I'm curious to see what we all do with our lovely colored and great smelling fiber.