Dying to Dye

Yes, I have been absolutely dying to dye. Dyeing. I could just dye. So I did. I had JUST procured my dirt-cheap dye pots and a bargain of an electric two-burner ... but I promised the child that we'd do some Kool-Aid dyeing, so that's what we did.

Left to right, that's lemon-lime, blue raspberry, grape and orange. Kool-Aid really is interesting to dye with, and totally safe. It's got dye in it (duh), which makes it the colour it is when it's a drink. It also has citric acid in it, which is just the thing to set the dye and make sure it doesn't wash out and stain everything in sight.

You need one package of sugar-free Kool-Aid (the kind you would mix your own sugar into, without using any sugar) per 25g of yarn or roving or fleece or whatever. I had 100g of merino/nylon blend, so I split it into four and we had some fun.

We set up the workspace with plastic wrap. The green and blue were sprinkle-dyed, where the child just sprinkled the powder onto the soaked-and-squeezed roving. The purple and orange were individually mixed with a bit of water, so there's more colour coverage on those. She did want to leave a fair bit of white, though, so don't think that that's the result you'd get.

Anyway, then we closed up the plastic wrap and put them in a steamer for about an hour. I checked after 40 minutes and they hadn't quite exhausted the dye, so a little longer seemed like a good idea. After an hour, I took them out and set them to cool. When I opened them, there was no trace of colour on the plastic, nor did any colour wash out when I rinsed them. Success!

We didn't dye the dog and he was slightly sad about that. Or maybe just bored.

I finished the Fuse cardigan - yay! I want the sleeves to be a bit longer, so I might reblock it, or perhaps just continue to tug on them. Or I could push them up and ignore that issue altogether. The pattern calls for buttons on one of those short fronts, and loops on the other. It then wraps and buttons behind the neck. I don't think I want to do that now, though. Perhaps in the fall, but right now I really prefer it open or more casually wrapped.

  

Thank you to Eunice, the patient sweater model. Looks like the trim on the house needs painting there, and it seems the fence needs a bit of repair. That pot could also use a plant in it ... you know, to keep the weeds down. We really should drive to someone else's house to take knitting photos.

Below are two baby crows that were on my back lawn. Then a couple days later, they were gone. But then we found some carnage in another area of the lawn. I can only hope that one made it out alive. Nature's cruel. Apparently parent crows chuck their young out of the nest when they're within a week or two of flying because it's safer to have them spread out than to have them be easy pickins in a nest. I'd never heard of that, but there's a really smart crow guy on the internet and I found his site when I was in a mad panic about saving these birds. I settled down after reading his material. Dude knows what he's talking about.

This one here is calling for food in that classic bird pose:

I'll be finished the niece's cardigan pretty quick, so that'll be in my next post. WOOT!