I spent a couple of hours last night dyeing up some wool using kool aid that I acquired from eBay months ago. GREAT fun! Seriously, although I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all this yarn. I very well may sell it on etsy if it comes out a good enough quality. I have very cleverly managed to dye my hands bright red, with a bonus raspberry-blue fingernail. Any tips on how to get rid of the dye would be greatly appreciated! I shall use gloves next time.
I did two types of dyeing – steaming and microwaving – and I’d say the microwaving was easier but steaming was more fun. My steamer has two racks but I didn’t want dye dripping from one rack to another, so the self coloured wool went in the microwave and the patterned stuff went in the steamer. I used roughly 6-8 packs of kool aid for the patterned wool and four for the self coloured, and that’s for 100g (4oz) of wool. Knitty has a great article on kool-aid dyeing here which was written by their advertising manager Kristi Porter. There’s also an article on the different dyeing techniques written by Julie Theaker and these were the articles I used to guide my dalliance. Thanks go to Emma Crew for pointing me to this colour chart too.
I’ll post again when I have them re-skeined, buut for now here are a few action shots, with more available here.
Posted under dyeing wool
This post was written by Vonnie on December 29, 2007
Im so loving the nail polish bottle weighing it down
:-p
It’s not nail varnish – it’s a big bottle of lush’s snow fairy
Ack! I’m in LOOOOOOVE. You do a fantastic job on dying yarn!!! Can I send you my wool interlock so you can dye it and send it back to me??? :p
You could totally do this yourself, seriously! You have better access to kool aid than I do. If you have a slow cooker or crockpot you could do it no problem
Ahh but the question is – do they still smell of sheep?
It smells of fruit! I actually washed it once it came out of the steamer/microwave but it still smells of kool aid
love the kool-aid dying!!!!!!!!!
thank you for the kind comment on creative world x thank you for the kind comments. yes, sea glass is something you can get from a few UK sellers. (Mine came from Altered Treasures. You can also get in from ebay http://crafts.search.ebay.co.uk/sea-glass_Crafts_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQcatrefZC12QQdfspZ32QQfromZR10QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQga10244Z10425QQsabfmtsZ1QQsacatZ14339QQsaobfmtsZinsifQQsaprchiZQQsaprcloZ. ) The mosaic tiles came from ebay.com ( http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=stained+glass+mosaic+tiles&category0= ). The heart bead and butterfly bead came from http://www.shipwreckbeads.com .
Kind regards,
Joy
iamjoygray@yahoo.com
what a great way to dry them!