My Yarn

Here is my contribution to the kool-aid dyeing party. The colors here aren't even close: the purple is less muddy and green is a bright lime. The color combination is gorgeous, but I can't take credit. When I signed up for the knitting listserv, KnitTalk, one of the first messages I read was from someone who had used purple and green kool-aid. As I recall, she dyed the yarn while it was in a ball, purple on one side and green on the other and she hoped where the colors met in the middle would be brownish. Cool idea. She said it worked out, except that trying to skein a wet ball of yarn was Not Fun. What I did with the yarn was even more idiotic. I had two balls of DK merino (what brand you ask? Um. Debbie Bliss? Jaeger? Rowan? Something like that). I wanted to dye them both at the same time. I wanted a long skein. Do you see how this train is headed to Crazy Town? I held two strands of the yarn together and made myself a skein on the warping board, which made a figure eight. Or an infinity sign. The warping board was the lesser of the two evils. What I should have asked myself when holding those two strands together was, "how, pray tell, will you get them apart, as, inevitably you must?" I did not ask that question until it was much too late. Then there were tears, sweat, recriminations. It was bad. Len was patience personified.

Other than that really dumb decision, the dyeing went off with only a couple of hitches. I used four or five packets of each color (grape and lime) in 1/2 cup of water and I used squirt bottles to get it directly onto the yarn. The yarn sucked it up really fast: when I squeezed the yarn to make sure the dye was getting all the way in, the liquid came out clear. Once I was done, I microwaved it for 4 minutes (2 minute increments). I ended up having to add more dye later because of white spots, but I think I'm close enough to full coverage now (there are some lighter spaces, but it seems to be mostly shading).

These will probably be socks. After I finish the Kool-Aid Socks, of course. Yes, really, "of course".