misocrafty

Saturday morning Daniel and I took a trip to our favorite Mexican food restaurant. Which just so happens to be near a yarn shop, fancy that. So I also got to take a trip to the Village Spinning and Weaving yarn store. I had intended to only buy a pair of Addi's for working on Clapotis. But they had a huge skein of undyed super wash sock yarn.

This skein is huge at almost 600 yard and a half a pound; I've got a lot of sock yarn. So I thought why not spend my Saturday up to my elbows in Kool-aid. So my first yarn dyeing experience began. I bought about 15 packets of Kool-aid, in such flavors as Lemon-lime, Grape, and Blue Berry Blue. I followed the instructions from knitty, on dyeing yarn. And this is what I made:

I didn't have enough dye, so I decided to just go with the tie dyed look. I was amazed at the amount of dye that this yarn sucked up. The liquid was clear before I even cooked the yarn, which I did in the microwave. I did add vinegar to the pre-soak and to the dye mixture; because I have heard that it helps the colors become more vibrant. So now I have almost 600 yards of fruity smelling sock yarn.

I was worried that there would be too much white, but when I wound it all up I realized that the colors were pretty cool. Next time I need to blend my colors together better, but over all I am happy with my first attempt. My favorite part of this yarn is where the lemon-lime and the grape run together. It makes this great olive green color. Next time I think I am going to try dunking the sections into the dye instead of "hand painting' the yarn with a turkey baster. I even knit up a little swatch, so I could see this yarn in action:

So my house still smells like Kool-aid, especially my craft room, where I hung my yarn to dry with a fan. And don’t worry my fingernails are finally returning to their normal color. I had a lot of fun with this project, so much so that I am going to order some more undyed yarn from Knit Picks. They carry fingering weight and worsted weight and I plan on ordering both, right now in fact. If you are looking for a good yarn dyeing tutorial, beside the one on knitty, here is a great one from a fellow crafty blogger. I did buy one other thing, but I will save it for tomorrows post. Oh, the suspense.