I have been very lacking in creative inclination in the last few months. I tried making a pair of felt slippers for Creature at the weekend but they came out too small so will have to start again. However in digging through the box of roving I found the packets of Kool-Aid that Julie bought back from America two years ago, and so I decided to do some dyeing (vaguely following the instructions here on Knitty.) It's slightly worrying that some people feed this stuff to their children, it really is the ultimate non-food 'food'.
This is about 5oz of fleece roving, just soaked in cold water.
The instructions say you do not need extra acid to fix as the Kool-aid is pretty acidic.
1 pack per 1oz of fleece or yarn, so I made up 2 packs strawberry, 2 packs cherry
and 1 pack blackcurrant, each in a glassful of water.
This batch has all three colours:
This batch has just the cherry and strawberry, it looks all the same but one is more pinky:
They were both heated in the microwave for 8 minutes, in two minute chunks with a rest while the other was heated. The instructions said a mere 4 minutes but suggested you keep going until the colour is absorbed and the water is clear; you can see here all the dye has been absorbed:
I left them to cool then washed and rinsed gently, squeezing as much water out as possible
(do not wring or swish about too much to avoid felting)
Here are the two hanks, one is about 3oz, the other about 2oz
Close up of the lovely soft colours:
Hope to do a bit of spinning before next week.
We are going to see if it works just as well on Creature's hair:-)
(Linking back to Fibre Arts Friday where you can visit other creative wonders.)
Nice post about dyeing. I would like to try this sometime. I'm interested to see the yarn that you spin from it.
ReplyDeleteI love the colors. When I've dyed with kool aid in the past, it always comes out in pastels so getting a nice color like you did is a bonus.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to your yarns you spin from that fiber.