Kool Aid Dying.

If someone had asked me if I would ever be boiling yarn on the top of the stove, I would have been pretty certain that the answer would have been "No."

 I would have been wrong.

On Monday, we bought 8 packets of Kool Aid.  They were 4 for $1.00, so we made a $2.00 investment in dye.   Kiddo and I used the swift to un-skein a skein of Paton's Classic Wool and most of a skein of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.   I tied each of the hanks in about 8 places so they would not tangle.

We used 2 pots with  2 quarts of water and half a cup of vinegar in each.  In the Fisherman's Wool pot, we used 2 cherry and 2 pink lemonade packets.  In the Patons, there were 2 grape, one cherry, and one blue one.  I was hoping for pink and purple skeins.  The purple looked ghastly at first, but seemed to get better as we went along.  A potato masher worked very well for squishing the yarn down into the dye. 

Wool Festival talks about the dye becoming exhausted.  It really did happen.  The water in the pots became clear.  We boiled them for about 7 min and waited a few hours for them to cool.  Even when I rinsed them there did not appear to be any dye coming out.

It seemed to take forever for them to finally dry.  We used the new ball winder to make them into cakes.  What a great toy!

I'm really, really happy with them.  They have variation in the color but it is subtle.  We are going to do this again!