Blue-ish

Another foray into the murky art of dyeing your own yarn... this time with Kool-Aid!  Three packets of Mixed Berry Kool-Aid to be exact!

I used the same yarn as with the Easter Egg Dyeing Experiment, the Red Heart & Sole with Aloe.

 I wanted to try dyeing a self-striping, graduated color this time so I wound the skein around three chairs (wrapping each chair 5 times before moving onto the next chair), and I continued wrapping each chair 5 times until I ran out of yarn.  I cut twelve small pieces of yarn to use as figure-eight ties, to make sure I would be able to untangle my mini-skeins after I was done dyeing the yarn.  I made sure to tie my figure-eight ties loose enough that the dye would be able to easily penetrate underneath the tied area.   

When my yarn was all tied up, I slipped the mini-skeins off of the chairs and let the whole thing soak in some luke-warm water for 30 minutes while I prepared the dye bath.  The dye bath, of course, was insanely simple to make... just dissolve three packets of Mixed Berry Kool-Aid in about 4-6 cups of water, and let the bath come to a simmer.

After the yarn was done soaking, I just squeezed out the excess water and dipped all three mini-skeins (still attached to each other) into the simmering dye. I immediately removed the first skein & left the next two to soak about 3 minutes, removed the 2nd skein and left the last skein to soak about 5-6 minutes, and then removed the whole thing to rinse, pat dry, and reskein into one big skein for a final hang to dry.

So, here is my first attempt at Kool-Aid dyeing; I'm going to call it “Blue-ish” :)

One skein of Red Heart & Sole is more than enough yarn for a pair of toddler socks, and so I set to work to improve little E's wardrobe :)  Here she is modeling her latest pair (I love the way the stripes came out!)  Here is the Ravelry link as well!