Drinking the Kool-Aid
Surprise: I am a big fan of colour in general. My affinity for the rainbow is fairly well known among the people I knit with and hang out with in general. I love bright yarns and bold colour combinations. I knit a shawl in black and it nearly killed me. I complained for weeks about it being the dullest project I had ever knit. No colour means no joy. So I was smitten with my friend Kalin’s Kool-Aid dyed yarn (seen here). I was completely taken with the idea that I could actually dye my own yarn. It seems sort of obvious I know but I immediately went off to the grocery store to try my hand at it. I did the first two skeins using this tutorial for Kool-Aid.
While Kalin is more adventurous and went with 3 colours I chose to dye my first 2 hanks in solid colours (1 skein of Malabrigo Worsted undyed and split into 2). It worked amazingly! It’s really neat to see a drink mix turn my white yarn into 2 amazing colours. I was shocked when the boiling process was finished to find the water was clear and the yarn was a bright blue and red. It was like magic!
Once I had my two skeins going I wanted to try some hand painting. While the 2 handpainted skeins weren’t quite what I had envisioned, they were great in a totally different way. I used this tutorial to handpaint with Wilton’s Cake Dyes.
My attitude towards dying yarn is a bit non-specific. I wanted a lovely pink with small streaks of black but what I got was sort of a dark cherry/light cherry type of colourway which is good in its own way. The blue/green combo actually worked out much better than I had originally anticipated. I like its marine-like qualities. I can’t wait to try out some more combinations!
