Lace Weight Dyeing – Success!

These are the two colourways I came up with after mixing some Koolaid colours together which surprised me a little actually…who knew you could get such pretty colours from Koolaid mixing? They are basically the same colours but one is more muted and the other is a little more vibrant. How’d I do that? I added some red and blue food colours into their respective colours for the brighter skein! The “Copper Sunset” skein (top left) is a little more muted than the “Coral Reef” skein (right) but since it’s lace weight yarn, I think it’s an appropriate colour and would be lovely knitted up as a shawl.

Of course, click on the images to see larger too!

Copper Sunset is for sale here.

Coral Reef is for sale here.

Berrylicious Yarn

Just into the New Year and another hank of Koolaid dyed yarn! Woohoo! This one reminds me of berries…and looks just that delicious too!

I’m not sure which dyes I prefer…Koolaid or Gaywool. The nice thing about Gaywool is you can get variations in colour tones. I’ll have to try that with Koolaid too…maybe a little mixing to see what I get…so far, this has been solid colours right out of the package.

For sale in my Etsy shop. Click here.

Click on photo to see larger!

My First Koolaid Dyeing

Koolaid is so much fun! This skein is my first using Koolaid.

To achieve the colours, I soaked the sock yarn in a mixture of water and vinegar (just a glug) which really helped the wool to take up the colours of the Koolaid when I did apply the colours to the yarn. I mixed one packet each of Koolaid (cherry, strawberry, grape, ice blue & a surprise colour which turned out to be light green) with 1/4 cup of water and applied the colours to the yarn using a turkey baster. Following that, I put the yarn into a microwave-safe container and nuked it in the microwave on 2 minute intervals: 2 minutes on high, let sit for 2 minutes and then a final 2 minutes on high and let cool. Once it’s cool, I rinsed it off in warm water and was quite pleased to see that the water ran clear very quickly!

I think I may prefer Koolaid too… when you’re dyeing and “cooking” the yarn you’re greeted with a sweet fragrance in the air instead of your house smelling like a lab like it does when you use commercial dyes like Gaywool. And, of course, the yarn smells pretty following too…not so much rinsing in liquid soap to get the smell out. I don’t know about you but I really prefer yarn that smells pretty to yarn that smells like vinegar which is pretty common when you get handdyed commercial yarns. I make sure all my skeins smell pretty before I twist them into their final product.

Oh yes, why the name I chose of LIDO SUNRISE? Well, when I was on my honeymoon in Jamaica, we stayed at a resort named Grand Lido and every morning we were greeted with these lovely colours…from the icey blue of the water to the bright reds of the flowers and the sunshine…it was breathtaking!

Click on the image to see larger.

For sale in my Etsy shop. Click here.