Well, I finally dyed some yarn and spinning fiber and I love it!
I could only find these colours of Kool Aid at my supermarket so obviously I had a limited pallette to work with, no yellow or blue. Cherry, orange, lemon-lime, tropical punch, grape.
The tropical punch is not blue at all as the package would suggest, but a dark orange-red.
I used two methods to dye: double-boiling mason jars in a canning pot, and cooking pans of water and yarn in the oven. These are the yarns I am most proud of so far, they were dyed once and then over-dyed with more pink and red:
That pale pink is the best! I just added yarn to a jar of red dye that wouldn’t exhaust and re-heated it. The only trouble is that I can’t yet re-create that shade, I have tried and the yarn didn’t accept the dye for some reason. Oh well, I will try again.
Solar dyeing is something I played around with and it did work to exhaust some of the dyes. More research is definitely needed (and a solar oven!)
I have also spun some tiny sample skeins of the wool-mohair fiber from the last post.
Crab Apple blossoms outside my apartment:
Pictures of dry yarn and fiber tomorrow!
May 12, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I have a feeling we all learn that the blue package is really pink inside!! I found out the hard way, even though after the fact, I noticed the glass of Kool-aid was pink, and not actually blue.
Have you noticed that the fiber smells fruity afterward? That’s my favorite part.
May 13, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Yes! My kitchen definitely smells like a wet, fruity sheep
May 14, 2009 at 9:34 am
Hi Juliana!
It is so sad that kool-aid no longer makes a yellow drink! When I fist started out with dyeing it was kool-aid all the way, and at that point they were just discontinuing the yellow lemonade- too bad!
Anyway your stuff looks great!