I’ve never dyed yarn before. I love to experiment, but I
don’t really like following instructions. This makes for an interesting combo
when it comes to hand dyeing. I cook a lot and like to mix different recipes
for the same dish into a funny hybrid that by nature I can never
remember how I
made. Must be a good method for dyeing yarn, right? Definitely! Well,
perhaps .
. .

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I was actually going for more of a gradated-sunset-kind-of-look with my second sock blank,
but since my cherry blank completely exhausted all the dye in the red
Kool-Aid (to my surprise!), I only had lemonade and orange left. I
decided to wing it and try mixing 1 pack of orange with some red food
dye and a splash of vinegar and see what I’d get.

 

First I dumped the whole blank in the pot of boiling lemonade until it exhausted the dye.

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I’ve
always been curious about dyeing yarn, but I was intimidated by the safety
precautions you need to take with dyes that aren’t food safe (although now that
Kelley and Kerin have given us some pointers, I am feeling more confident). Then
Nina pointed me towards the What a Kool Way to Dye group on Ravelry, and I
couldn’t wait to give Kool Aid dyeing a try. My local grocery store didn’t have
a huge variety of flavors, so I picked up two of everything they had.

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I’ve recently been exploring natural dyeing methods, and I was really excited when we started carrying a Indigo Dye kit.  What makes indigo dyeing a little tricky is that indigo is not naturally water soluble, and you need water to help the fabric absorb the dye.  So the indigo in this kit is reduced into powder, and when you add it to a bucket of water, it is a yellow green color because the oxygen was removed.  You add wet yarn or fabric to the indigo and hold it in the dye bath for only a couple of minutes.  When you remove the dyed yarn, it is a bright green color and you can watch it turn blue as it comes into contact with oxygen.  I have a more in depth tutorial for dyeing with this Indigo Dye kit here.  

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