Kool-aid dyeing

I came across dyeing yarn with Kool-aid earlier this week and was intrigued beyond belief. Of course I had to get my hands on that stuff and do my own dyeing experiments. We don't get Kool-aid in regular stores here in Finland, but it is sold in online yarn stores, as well as this one shop I found that sells everything American, ranging from Kool-aid to old cars. From there I bought my Kool-aid, eight sachets at first, to dye two 100g hanks of sock yarn.

My first Kool-aids!

When my Kool-aid arrived in the mail yesterday, I did a little dance and started winding my ball of white sock yarn into a big, loose hank. I used Novita tico tico which is now discontinued. That's too bad because it was a nice thin sock yarn for great money value! After my hank was tied in various places I put it to soak in warm water for half an hour. Then I prepared my dyes. I wanted to make a self striping yarn with three colors so I used two sachets of tropical punch for a nice bright red, one sachet pina pineapple for yellow and one of ice blue raspberry lemonade for blue. I took out three bowls of the same height and added warm water. In addition I took 3dl of boiling water and added 10g of citric acid, pouring 1dl in each of the bowls. This wouldn't really have been necessary since Kool-aid already has some citric acid in it, but I had some lying around so I decided to go ahead. Then I put my yarn in the bowls, 1/4th in two separate ones and the rest in the middle one (see the picture below). After that I added the Kool-aid, each color in its own bowl. I poured it from the sachet onto the yarn. This resulted in an uneven coloring as the parts of yarn that were on top absorbed much more of the dye than the parts underneath. 

Dyeing my yarn!

The yellow and the blue were exhausted very quickly (surprisingly quickly!) the water turning milky and all the dye absorbed into the yarn. The red took a while longer and I moved the hank around to get some color on the parts that hadn't absorbed any dye in between the different colors. These parts turned pink as there was not enough dye left to make them red. After all the color was exhausted, I squeezed most of the water out and put the hank on a baking pan to put it in the oven for the dye to set. I baked my yarn in 200°C for 10 minutes.

Baking yarn - interesting

After the yarn had cooled (it steamed quite vigorously coming out the oven) I washed it in warm water so that any excess dye would come out but none did. I guess that's good... Anyway, then I tried to dry it up as much as I could, using a towel to help me and after that put it to dry in the bathroom. It was still dripping so that was probably good. 

Drying my yarn in the bathroom

This morning the yarn was fully dry and I had a beautiful, colorful hank of sock yarn ready to be knit. I named the colorway parrot, I think it's quite descriptive of the yarn.

My first Kool-aid dyeing experience: a success!

I have already found the perfect pattern to knit from my first self-dyed yarn. It had to be something perfect, naturally, as this became pretty special yarn for me. The segments of each color are quite short so the yarn would definitely not work with any given pattern. The one I chose is Margaritaville by Adrienne Fong. And as it happens she is the designer of the month next month in Sock Knitters Anonymous, which is just perfect! Only trouble is I have to wait for 24 more days to cast on... But luckily I have other projects to work on, not the least of which more Kool-aid dyeing!