Dyeing: A How To With Kool-Aid!

I decided for the newest Mystery Shawl I've signed up for that I wanted to do it in red yarn. Unfortunately, I don't have have any laceweight red yarn. So what did I do? I decided to dye some! It was really fun! So now, I share with you how it went.

I suggest that if you don't have air conditioning (we do not) that you do this on a cool day so as not to die of heat exhaustion from your stove. Yesterday was not too bad. Plus I started early in the morning while it was still really nice. I had originally tried dyeing my yarn with cherry tea on Sunday, but it turned out a gross looking skin color. Not cool.

So! I asked Rach to pick up some cherry Kool-aid while at the store the other day and that's what I used. I didn't want to use industrial type dyes because of the little man I'm carrying, so food safe stuff it was!

First, you must soak your undyed yarn to get it ready for dye uptake. This allows all the air to get out of the yarn so you don't have to deal with those air pockets keeping the dye from it. Soak it in lukewarm water and GENTLY squeeze it to get the air out. Don't agitate it - it could felt. (I'm using Knit Picks Bare laceweight - 100% Merino wool.)

Next mix your Kool-aid with water in a large pot. This pot needs to be big enough to let your yarn move around freely. I used 6 packs of Kool-aid for my two skeins of yarn. Settle your prepared yarn into the pot and turn it on high. What you want is for the water to almost come to a boil. If it actually boils then it can agitate and felt your yarn. So I watched it carefully and once the water started steaming and I saw a bubble or two, I turned off the heat and put a lid on it. Let it sit, stirring occasionally (again, gently) until the water has cooled until you can handle the yarn.

The third step is to rinse your yarn. The important part here is that your yarn goes into the same temperature water as it's coming out of so that you don't shock it. So for me, since my dye water was still fairly hot, I had to make sure that the water in my sink was pretty hot too. Fill your sink or tub with the water, then gently place your yarn in the water and let it sit for awhile (about 15-30 minutes is what I did). This is the first step to rinsing out excess dye.

Remove the yarn, drain and fill the sink again - this time adding soap. I used baby shampoo rather than the suggested liquid dish soap because my dish soap has bleach in it. Let it sit again. Drain and refill the sink a third time with clear water. Let sit to rinse out the soap. This should be enough to completely rinse it out, but if you still have dye leaking into your water keep rinsing until your water is clear.

After you're done rinsing, hang to dry. I used plastic hangers because I didn't want to risk rust getting onto my yarn from a metal hanger.

Tada! All done. It didn't turn out quite as dark as I had wanted it. I should have used more packs of Kool-aid. But! For a first time run, I think it turned out pretty well. It's a little variegated, which is actually pretty cool. I think it will knit up nicely and if I don't like it knit up then I can over-dye it once the project is done.

I think the best part was how all the color in the Kool-aid got sucked into the yarn. When I was done letting it cool in the pot, the water was pretty much clear! It was awesome! I now have about 1700 yards of pinky-red laceweight ready for a new shawl! I've heard that you can dye in old crock pots too, so I might do that next time just to save the hassle of the stove being taken up. I'll have to hit up Goodwill and see if there are any crock pots around.

Now it is a lovely, cool, cloudy, non-June like day and I'm going to go enjoy it!