I wanted to post something more interesting than moving and unpacking when I realized I had pictures of my grape koolaid hat I’d never blogged about. I dyed this yarn with the fruit loop yarn in the end of December and made a hat.
I started with this:
added some koolaid,
and got this:
First, I made a 6 x 70 inch skein using the warp board Mr. T’s dad made me. I first saw such a warp board during one of my many google searches for dyeing stripes. Ysolda, along with Eunny described how to dye yarn in stripes. I also used yarns to dye for which I got for christmas to go with the warp board and the bare wool. To decide the length of the skein, I started knitting a hat out of the bare peruvian wool and then I unraveled it and measured to figure out that the average length of yarn I used for each row was 70 inches. My warp board was 35 inches wide so that wrapping the yarn from the left to the right and back to the left would be 70 inches. I wrapped exactly how Ysolda described in her warp board tutorial (click on the link above).
Next I decided what stripe pattern I wanted. The way I wrapped the yarn doesn’t give a long circular skein, it gives a long skein with two ends which is why the blue stripes frame the dark purple stripes even though I dyed equal lengths (2 x 70 or 140 inches) with each of the three colors.
Dark Purple: 3 packets grape and a pinch of tropical punch
Light Purple: < 1/2 packet grape
Light blue/purple: 1 packet ice blue lemonade and 1/2 packet grape.
Then I mixed the koolaid with minimal water in guinness pint glasses which hold more yarn than normal pint glasses because the top half is much wider than the bottom half (I dyed 100 grams in 3 pint glasses so ~34 grams each glass). I stuffed each section of wet yarn into the appropriate pint glass, put all the pint glasses into a pyrex pie pan, and stuffed the whole contraption into my microwave. I was impatient. I microwaved for a few minutes until everything was warm, waited for the yarn to cool, rinsed it, and let it dry. I mostly used the knitty tutorial for kool-aid dyeing although I modified it by using the pint glasses to dye all three colors at once.
I just realized I only have a 50 gram ball to get through before I allow myself to dye more yarn. I think this might be a good time to try finger-to-cuff mittens with a figure 8 caston. I’m scared to try a figure 8 caston with sock yarn until I’ve practiced.
