Hey Kool-Aid!

I swear my mother has become a born again knitter. She taught me how to knit YEARS ago and I remember her knitting baby things, doll clothes, Barbie items, vests and sweaters for us kids, ski hats and headbands, and I remember when she knit herself an Icelandic yoke sweater out of Lopi. But then my mother put her needles down for several years...and I plundered and borrowed those needles while I slowly fell in love with knitting. In the last 2-3 years though, she has picked them back up and is really making a go of knitting again! I think she is KnitPick's most valued customer because she is always ordering from them! She and I have always been interested in dyeing a batch of yarn and KnitPicks makes it so easy! Mother bought me a "sock blank" for a Christmas gift, and my stocking was full of packets of Kool-Aid! How DID Santa know?! ;)

A sock blank is a large knitted swatch of fabric made from cream colored yarn in various weights. In our case, it was a double strand of sock-weight yarn. We read through the instructions and made our first attempt at space dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid! You soak the blank for a good 30 minutes in warm water with a "glug" of vinegar (this whole process is very similar to dyeing Easter eggs--and I know you can dye yarn with Easter egg dye tablets and I hoarded a bunch last year when they went on sale--but more on that later).

We dissolved unsweetened Kool-Aid in hot water and "painted" it onto the blank. I was using Blue Raspberry and Grape but I wasn't too thrilled with the grape because grape Kool-Aid is never quite purple, it is more of a grey shade, so I threw in some Black Cherry as well.

Next you wrap up the painted blank in plastic wrap and nuke it for a couple minutes to set the dye.

Here is my finished and dried blank. Remember that it was a double strand of sock weight yarn...

...and here it is all unraveled! If you look closely, you can see bits of white coiled up in the yarn. I think we didn't let it soak quite through before we started. Dyeing yarn must be like dissolving yeast in that you have to literally set the timer and walk away for said time, otherwise you'll be too eager to start before it is in fact ready. I've already skeined this up and it's sitting in my sock yarn stash. Our next dyeing project will be the full blown acid fast dyes, but we'll have to wait for a little nicer weather so we can work out in the garage!

And I had to put this on because I think it is one of the funniest things I've seen all week! I love Failblog!