The yellow and green for my Jamaican Pride sweater. A swift is a great place to let them dry!
Well, I have to say, if I had gotten these kind of results the first time I tried dyeing, I’d have done lots more of it by now. The green and yellow have come out well and I’ll be doing the black later today. I am fairly certain that it will work out too. I will do it using the simmer method as that seems to work the best. On my way home earlier, I stopped at the store and got some unsweetened Kool-Aid. There is a really good page online right here that gives excellent instructions on dyeing with Kool-Aid or and other unsweetened fruit drink mix. Obviously the different mixes will provide varying results, but you will have fun experimenting with the different kinds and combinations I am sure.
I bought 6 packets of Kool-Aid – 2 each of cherry, tropical fruit punch, and grape. I started by dissolving two packets of the tropical fruit punch in about 3 liters of water. I thought it was a blue color because that was the color of the packaging, but was surprised to find out that it was a red. I then added the two packets of cherry and about 1/4 cup of vinegar. This was a ballpark and it was probably a little less than that. I mixed this in a pan of water which I brought to a simmer while the yarn to be dyed was soaking in warm water in the sink. Once the pot began to simmer, I squeezed out the excess water from the yarn and added it to the pot. I carefully moved it around to allow the dye bath to coat the entire skein. If you agitate it too much you run the risk of felting your yarn so be careful. I was very surprised at how quickly the yarn absorbed all the color from the dye bath. This did not happen with the yellow and green batches from yesterday. I will have to try a little experimenting with the black to see what happens. Within minutes the water was clear, just as it should be. This means that the yarn absorbed all the dye and was ready.
At this point you have the option of letting the yarn cool down naturally with the water, but I was too impatient and I wanted to try the grape. I strained the yarn and rinsed it in the sink. Again, I was surprised as the water stayed clear – the dye was already set into the yarn. Again, this did not happen with the acid batch from yesterday. I am thinking now that I will add vinegar to the black batch even though it says you don’t have to. I then dissolved the remaining two packets of grape in water, added vinegar, and then the wet yarn. Unfortunately the purple didn’t turn out nearly as well as the red. There were, however, numerous factors that could have contributed to that.
- I was using a much thicker, different yarn (the previous yarn used was a fingering weight merino/cashmere blend – this was a chunky weight, 100% wool)
- Even though I had less yarn, I had less Kool-Aid (only 2 packets this time)
- It’s impossible to know what processes the yarns went through beforehand and how this would affect color saturation when dyeing.
I intend to get some more grape and add it to the batch to see how that works. I am thinking I will need more for the coarser yarn and the darker color as well. I also plan on trying sprinkle dyeing with both Kool-Aid and acid dyes in the near future. I will definitely keep you posted as to the results so be sure to watch for future posts on dyeing. This is great because now I can use all those hanks of wool I have in my stash. There was also a mention that you can get spectacular heathery results by dyeing colored yarn – especially gray. I will have to try that too!
I ♥ dyeing! Happy Valentine's Day!
Hugzzz 😎
