Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Little Boy Joy

As promised, our adventures in Kool-Aid dyeing.

We started with Knit Picks Dye-Your-Own sock yarn. Plain old white. Sorry, no pics. I wasn't even thinking about blogging when we did it. We just enjoyed ourselves immensely.

We gave the whole skein a dunking in cold water and let it soak a bit, then made sure it was covered with water. We did our dyeing in a large deep skillet. Worked for us, and we got to watch.

Then we sprinkled three packets of drink mix over the pan, in different areas: orange, red, and purple. Brought it up to a simmer and watched it until the water was clear. I poked at it with a fork a little, to make sure the bottom layers got some color, and when the purple took up the dye really fast and turned sort of greyish, we added another packet of purple.

That was it. When the water was clear we turned it off and let it cool overnight. (The hardest part for the Little Boy!) Rinsed it out the next morning, hung it on the fence to dry, and we have yarn!

We wound it into a ball, and I've started his socks. I think it came out gorgeous! I would buy this colorway, if I found it.


Yes. I realize I'm making pink-ish socks for a little boy. He's six. He's proud of the yarn he dyed. What's a mother to do? What would you do?

1 comment:

The Little (Knitting) Hedgehog said...

I would knit him those socks and encourage him to wear them proudly. Phooey on narrow gender role color assignments I say!

I'm Noelle from the dye-o-rama swap. Would you mind contacting me? I see you haven't confirmed yet and wanted to be sure we have the right email address for you.

Thanks!