Adventures in Dyeing!!!

I wanted to use Kool Aid to dye some yarn for my niece's baby. I went to the wonderful group of friends I have online to see if my idea on using the heat/sun of the day to dye with Kool Aid would work. As usual, my friends came through with ideas and suggestions that were very helpful. What a supportive group! The only flaw in my plan was that that today the heat wave was not in sight and there would be no sun to heat the black plastic to set my dye.

Undaunted, I turned to another source of heat, which would hold the yarn in a somewhat flat and fixed position so the colors would not blend as much when being heated. The outdoor gas barbecue seemed the perfect solution. Here are the photos and some descriptions of the process.

Soak & vinegar: I soaked the approx. 1 pound of spun yarn in a bucket of cool water, with about a cup of white vinegar in the water. I soaked the yarn for about 3 hours. I finally found a use for the ash tray we've had kicking about the deck! It made a great weight for the yarn in the water.

Protect Furniture: I put down a black plastic bag and arranged the skeins on the plastic so I could work on all three skeins at once. Two skeins are the same size, the third is smaller. There is a fourth on the left side that is just odds and ends off my bobbins. The skeins were very slightly squeezed coming out of the soak bucket, but not wrung out. I wanted them to be soppy wet and they needed to still have the vinegar content in them.

Apply Dye: I opened packets of Kool Aid and poured them over the wet skeins. I used 20 packets of Kool Aid to start, but ended up using 23 total. I had Lemon Aid, Cherry, Lemon-Lime, Watermellon-Strawberry, Artic Apple, Black Cherry, Grape, and Berry Blast. I sprinkled them directly on the wet yarn. Then I put some foil over the top and squished the yarn down to move some of the dye throughout the lower parts of the yarn.

Heat: I then slid the colored yarn onto some foil on the barbecue. I did get the colors mixed a little doing this. Had I thought ahead, I could have done the coloring on the foil on a cutting board or a cookie sheet and slid it onto the barbecue from there. I covered the fiber with more foil.

I turned the barbecue on low - all four burners, closed the lid and waited for 10 minutes. Then I turned it off and let it sit for about 15 minutes before I checked the yarn.

Check Progress: I checked the yarn, and it looked good as far as taking up the dye. However there were more white spots than I wanted. So I added 3 more packets of Lemon Aid color to the bare spots, sprinkled some water over the added Kool Aid, covered again, and heated for about 3 minutes then turned off the barbecue and let it sit about 30 minutes.

Cool & Rinse: I felt the yarn was cool enough for rinsing, so I put it in a bucket of clear water. There was a little yellow run off from the corners of the foil that had yellow that didn't touch the yarn. All of the dye on the yarn was absorbed into the yarn. The Artic Apple has a white cast to the Kool Aid drink (my son insisted we make some to "use") and I don't think I'd recommend the Artic Apple for dying. The water had a white milky cast to it for the rinse.

Enjoy: Here are the drying skeins of dyed yarn!