Kool Aid Dyed Yarn

A couple weeks ago, my fiance gave me a tiny bit of money to buy some yarn for myself. It took me a while, but I finally decided on the perfect yarn that I wanted! I went over to Knit Picks, and decided on some gorgeous red fingering yarn, in hopes to make a pair of socks one day. And some undyed merino fingering weight. They came last week, and I was SO excited! I couldn't get to the office fast enough to pick up my box, and I practically ran home to open it up.  Oh man, I was in love. The yarns were so squishable, soft, and even better than I imagined. However, my focus was the undyed yarn. I had plans.

I researched a little bit, and decided on the way I was going to dye this yarn. I used this Knitty article, and this page as resources, and kind of went along on my own after that. So, I soaked my yarn in come warm water and vinegar for 30 minutes, while I got my Kool Aid dye all set up. I used 2 packets of pink lemonade, and 2 packets of lemonade, at this point. After the yarn was pretty soaked, I filled my crockpot up with a little bit of warm water (a little under halfway filled) .I gently squeezed out the water of the yarn, and put it in the crockpot water. Then I poured the KoolAid dye over the yarn in the crockpot, half of the pot was pink lemonade and the other half, lemonade. I read that there was big undyed spots, so I tried to use a turkey baster to get some dye on the bottom of the pot.

I turned the crockpot onto the "High" setting, because our crockpot only has a "Low" and a "High", and I'm not sure the low setting would have been hot enough. Well, anyway. I kept a meat thermometer dipped into the water, making sure the temperature doesn't go above 180 degrees. I clapped the lid on the crockpot and went off to watch TV and do a little bit of knitting. I kept coming back every 30 minutes or so to check on the temperature and how the dye looks, but after a couple of hours, the KoolAid had dissolved out of the water and into the yarn. So, at this point, I grabbed a spoon and lifted the yarn up out of the water... and I was horrified. The dye didn't penetrate into the inside yarn! It only got the first couple strands that I poured the dye directly over.

I looked at it for a couple minutes, deciding what to do. I very gently rolled the yarn around in the pot, to see how much I missed. And there was tons. Everywhere. So, I mixed up one more packet of Lemonade, and one more packet of Pink Lemonade, and started very gently, turning the yarn over and around in the pot, exposing all the areas that didn't get dyed. I poured some more dye on these parts, put the lid on, and waited until the water was clear once again. Then repeated, until I could see no more undyed sections, and the water was clear. One I was happy with it, I turned off the pot, let the water come down to room temperature. I was actually pretty tired at this point, so I just went to bed and let it cool. The next morning, I took it out, put it in a colander, and gently rinsed it with warm water. Squeezed out the water, and hung it outside in the sun to dry. The next day, I reskeined it, and was in awe.

Its absolutely gorgeous, I think. It came out exactly how I wanted, I can't believe it. I had the idea to do a scarf with this yarn, but now I'm not too sure. I'd have to find a pattern that is light, airy and spring-like for this yarn. So, I'm not sure. Perhaps a shawlette? I'm not sure my 400-ish yards would be enough for a full shawl, so maybe a mini one would be great.

Holiday Knittings

I hope everyone had a safe Halloween. My Halloween was spent walking around the block with a hot chocolate from Starbucks, looking at everyone's decorations and homemade haunted houses. I'm not particularly fond of Halloween, but any excuse to get out of the house with a hot chocolate, I'm all for it. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, its one of my favorite holidays of the year. Filled with food, pumpkin pie, the Thanksgiving Day parade, the smells and the weather. I love it all.  Then camping out all night at a chain store for the thrill of some fantastic deal? Awesome.

Anyway. I finished the French Press Felted Slippers a couple days ago, and I so adore them. My plan was to save them and wear them for the new apartment, but once they were done, I put them on my feet and didn't want to take them off. So I need to make another pair... for the new apartment, right? Yes!

Also, a couple weeks ago, I picked up a couple skeins of fingering weight yarn, with the brilliant idea of making a pair of socks. The yarn was pretty at the time, all grey shades, and was cheap. I found that it kept pilling, splitting, and being just crappy yarn. So, I decided it was bringing down my sock making experience, and I thought I'd find another use for them. I read about overdying yarn a while ago, and decided to test the idea out myself, and see if I could do it. I followed a simple tutorial (here), and came out with some pretty pretty colored yarn. I used light blue dye for one - which turned out kind of blue, purple and black shades, and a light pink dye on the other, which turned out to be reds and black. So much fun. And now I have 2 different skeins of overdyed yarns to decide what to do with. I'm thinking a scarf for a particular person's Christmas gift with the purple and black color, and a little lace headband with the red one - for me.