What happens when dye meets wool?

Take one skein of 100% wool, add 4 packages of Kool-Aid, heat and water!

I decided to use up some left over Kool-Aid from my dyeing experiment of two weeks ago. I had two skeins of Paton's Classic Wool in a heathered light grey and decided that I would try to dye one of them with Kool-Aid in the microwave. I wish that I had taken pictures during my process, but alas, I wasn't thinking.

I made a hank of yarn out of one skein of yarn using my Niddy Noddy that I made and tied the skein using figure eight ties.

I took two envelopes of grape and two envelopes of fruit punch and mixed each color with about 3/4 cup of hot water. After soaking the yarn in warm water as per my usual method (described here), I laid it out in a glass baking dish poured the dye mix over the yarn and used the microwave to heat it.

It was kind of a wing and a prayer experiment. I can't remember how long I let the microwave run, but I let the yarn cool, rinsed and voilà! Color!

I am thinking about knitting a hat in color-work with both the dyed yarn and the original light grey yarn.

Happy Dyeing!!

All the Pretty Colors!

Here are the results of the Kool-Aid dying day. The colors in the sunlight are wonderful. Yum!

Dying for beautiful wool.

A few weeks ago, my boss told me that my company had hired someone to head a new project. Little did I know, this person would not only be a knitter, but a spinner!!! I heard through the grapevine that I needed to introduce myself. And introduce myself I did!

I love the knitting world. It only took 10 seconds and I thought I had known her forever. We met for lunch and she gave me my first spinning lesson and loaned me an extra top whorl spindle and gave me three types of roving to get started. Oh and am I hooked. I went home that night and ordered my own spindle and 16 ounces -- yes, ONE POUND -- of Bluefaced Leicester wool.

Bluefaced Leicester are a long wool breed of sheep. longwool types are easier to spin. The "blue" is due to the color of the skin, not the color of the wool. Their faces are bald and their noses are "roman" which makes them look a little sad. According to the breed standard, "On both white and natural colored Bluefaced Leicesters, the wool should be tightly purled, fine, dense, semi-lustrous, and when parted, it should open cleanly to the skin. There should be an even, consistent fleece coverage on the body, and the fleece should be free of hair and kemp. There should be no tendency for the main body of fleece to “peel” (the fleece breaking and sloughing off).

The Bluefaced Leicester is classified as a longwool breed with a staple length of 3-6 inches, a fleece weight of 2½-4½ lbs., and a fiber diameter of 56s–60s count, or 24-28 microns. It creates high-quality semi-lustre yarns with soft hand, beautiful drape, and excellent dyeing properties."

I separated the wool into 12 pieces of 35 to 45 grams of roving and ran out to 3 different grocery stores to pick up a variety of Kool-Aid packages. Yes, Kool-Aid. Yes, you can dye wool with Kool-Aid. I just started with two colors tonight and will blog about the dyeing tomorrow.

Happy Knitting, errrr, Spinning, no Dyeing!!!