Sunday, January 07, 2007

"Excuse me, Ma'am...you have a rainbow in your microwave."

I joined the Get Stitchy Kool-Aid Dye Along and couldn't wait to start on it. I was fairly confident with the first batch. I started with Paton's Merino in Winter White and a shade of Kool-Aid that has already been proven...Grape. I followed many of the suggestions listed in the tutorials on the site, and finished with a very successful skein of purple yarn.

There is a bit of streakiness in it...I see some strands that are a bit more red than the others. Perhaps I need to stir a bit better, or it may be just how the yarn absorbed the dye. I'll have to play some more to find out what happened. For now, though, I like the little inconsistencies.



I'm not usually big on variegated yarns, but I wanted to experiment with the process. So I used a second skein of Paton's Merino in Winter White, and divided it between two jars. I dyed one in Lemon Lime and one in Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade. I'm somewhat satisfied with the resulting green, aqua and white yarn. I'm curious to see how it works up.



Next came the real unknown. I have four balls in my stash of a vintage mohair blend that I bought some time ago at a thrift store. It's Columbia-Minerva Reverie in Pink Frappe. In the store, it looked very pink. After getting it home, it really was more of a peach...which I rarely use. So it sat in the stash.



What if I overdyed it? Since it is a blend 67% Mohair, 33% acrylic, I wasn't sure how it would take the dye. Since I hadn't used it in all this time, I decided it was worth the risk.

I kept one ball as a control, dyed two balls with Black Cherry (one pack per ounce of yarn) and one ball with a double dose of Black Cherry (two packs per ounce of yarn). Hmmmmm. I think I like it. Now, what shall it become? I'd love your ideas.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did an amazingly fabulous job!!!

I actually have 3/4 of a ball of Patons Classic Wool (enough to knit a beanie) in my Stash at the moment and I was thinking of dyeing it just to see what would happen. Obviously, it works well! Now I just have to pick a color for it.

I just can't get over how great all of your yarn looks. This is exactly the reason that I wanted to do the dye-along. It's so fun and exciting for me to see everyone's creations.

Kerry said...

I haven't heard of the dye-along, but what a great way to get motivated to experiment. I absolutely love the way that mohair turned out! It makes we want to go through my stash and experiment with all the yarn that I haven't used because the color wasn't "just so". Keep posting the dye sucess!!

crissy said...

ya know i would never have heard of dying anything with kool aide. its just facinating to watch all the creativeness going on with all this. i love your varagated dye but then i love verageted for socks.
hum make me want to shop on line and go get some wool from joanns so i can try this out. by the time i get around ti it all the do along with be well over with. sigh. draw backs of living in alaska oh well but i am sure having fun watching :)

Jen said...

Your yarn looks great! Watch out, dyeing is so fun it can sneak its way into your knitting time...

JanKnit said...

Thanks for the comments, all!

Kerry, it's not too late. Join us!

Jen, you're right! It already has!!

Anonymous said...

I haven't tried dying yet...I'm curious as to how the green/blue/white combo will look knitted up.

Also, thanks for the comment on my flickr. I did indeed needlefelt the hat.

JanKnit said...

Karen...thanks! I have photos of a baby hat and Calorimetry out of that yarn on Flickr... go see!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jan-knit/