Thursday, November 22, 2012

Kool-Aid Meets Mohair

I have been wanting to try Kool-aid dyeing for years.  I finally made it happen last night.

I found lots of tutorials online but followed these directions at KnitPicks.com more than any other:http://www.knitpicks.com/kpimages/PDF/DyeingTutorial.pdf

I added 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon white vinegar to each package of Kool-aid.  I was disappointed that the Kiwi-Strawberry that was packaged in green was pink, so I combined it with the extra cherry package I bought.  I will have to search for a green another time.















I weighed 1 ounce of fiber for each package of Kool-aid then soaked it in room temp water for about a half hour.

Mostly I used Ellie's Mohair, but I made 2 batches (blue and purple) with Lama that we got a few years ago from a 4-H friend.

I drained the wet fiber and put it into the jars with the dissolved drink-mix.  I had to ad about 1 cup of water to cover the fiber with the dye.

Then I put three jars at a time into the microwave for two minutes.  After two minutes I stirred the fiber in the jars.  I continued to heat the jars until the water was clear and the dye was absorbed by the fiber.  I was very surprised how fast this happened.  The yellow absorbed the fastest.