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Kool-Aid yarn dyeing

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Rox gave me KnitPicks dye-your-own yarn and some Kool-Aid for my birthday, so I picked up canning jars for a yarn dyeing experiment. I was aiming for an orange sock yarn and a green worsted weight, somewhere between variegated and self-striping. I got pint mason jars, with wide mouths, and they were a perfect size. The yarn soaked in slightly soapy water for 20 minutes before the dyeing began.

Pre-dyeing.

I used lemon, orange, and cherry Kool-Aid for the sock yarn, divided the yarn roughly into three chunks, dumped it into the drink and popped it in the microwave. Three two-minute zaps on high power, and the water was clear, and the yarn definitely coloured. I left it about three minutes betwen zaps because I'm impatient. The red pot was a packet of cherry and half of an orange, the yellow pot was two lemons and half an orange, and the orange pot was two oranges.

Sock yarn in progress.

For the worsted weight, I used lime and a colour-changing cherry flavour which came out bluish. The end result looked like this:

Sock yarn rinsing. Worsted yarn rinsing.

Remind me never to drink Kool-Aid. I'm shocked at how well the colour took, and at what that implies for the chemical content of the Kool-Aid. Once the yarn was rinsed, washed, and rinsed again, I put it on coathangers in the bathroom to dry. It's still drying a day later, but this is how the skeins turned out:

Finished skeins.

When it eventually dries, the red orange skein will get turned into a pair of socks for me, the green I'm still trying to figure out. The yarn smells a little fruity but it's not unpleasant. I didn't end up with dye all over my hands and kitchen so I'm happy.

Finished, dried, and wound:

Finished dye job.

I love how this turned out! In summary: soak, zap, rinse, wash, rinse, dry, wind. Easy peasy.

I did a little research, and yarn dyed with Kool-Aid is colour-fast. When I washed and rinsed it, the water was clear, and the water in the dye-pots was clear when I was done microwaving. The yarn is hand wash, 100% merino wool, machine wash yarn wouldn't have taken the dye so well because of the nylon but it would make an interesting experiment. I'd guess the dye would fade if it was machine washed.