Kool-Aid Dyeing

[natalie058]

I tried this tonite for the first time with some LB Fisherman's wool that I finally bought. I used 5 different colors (grape, raspberry, changin cherry (greenish) watermelon cherry (pink) and something blue) and tried 4 different schemes...2 reddish and 2 bluish... right now they are hanging to dry and I will post pics very soon. I was skeptic at first but after the first skein I really got into it, and I'm so pleased with how they turned out. Except, now they smell like cherries. I thin I'm going to have to invest in some icing dye so there's no smell.

[SamplerLady]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/SamplerLady/mmouseplus.gifSmell goes away :) and food coloring doesn't seem to be as rich as the koolaid colors, IMHO.

I did some dyeing yesterday, too. It's a Mobius Scarf (http://home.att.net/~susanBinKC/patterns/mobius.html) made with a wool acrylic blend in the center and superwash wool as the border. The center section was white when I made it, and the border was a blue green mix. I used Wilton's paste food coloring with citric acid as the mordant. Put it all in a ziploc bag left slightly open and microzapped it for about three minutes. Rinsed and voila! Model is ED (whom I speak of so much) in a "way too early in the morning" picture. :D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/SamplerLady/Mobius.jpg

[natalie058]

That's gorgeous!! I'm so excited with the possibilities this offers!! I did mine combos of colors so it was very forgiving...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/natalie058/Crochet/dyedyarn.jpg

The purpley color looks much better in person, & my favorite is the skein all the way to the left thats mostly blue/green.
The smell is still pretty nasty at this point though.
What dye paste:water ratio do you use? (appx?) Kool Aid is pretty cheap which is nice, but when I went yesterday I noticed that don't have normal color anymore, they are all "changin" or "magically neon" etc.

[SamplerLady]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/SamplerLady/mmouseplus.gif I use lots of paste as I like the brighter colors.

Many of the changin' Kool Aid colors are still the same dyes. Blues, reds, etc. The Frosty Apple or something like that is a very nice minty appley green... Frosty Lemonade is no color. The Pina Colada is a nice coral.

Try mixing colors together. The pinks and oranges added together make nice corals.....

It is lots of fun! I like dyeing roving and then spinning it, too.