Zap that Yarn

I've been promising pictures of my adventures in hand dying wool, so here are my tips to other first time hand dyers:

There's a great article on Kool Aid dyeing on Knitty.com here.

Make sure you have plenty of space, covered by plently of newspaper. And buy yourself some rubber gloves. Kool Aid mixed with water and vinegar stains nearly everything it touches.

Put your yarn down on some seran wrap, enough to be able to cover it up later.

Put each color in a seperate disposable bowl.

Since I wanted lots of colors, I divided my skeins into "pies" and put the colors in "slices". See?

Looks good enough to eat!

Next the recipe calls for you to microwave your yarn. WHAT? Remember the plastic you put down earlier? Wrap it around your yarn so the colors won't run so much. A little runnage is good, since you want the colors to blend a little.

Zap that yarn for a couple minutes.

If you don't have enough counter space or newspaper-covered floors, you can dry your yarn on the back porch. Those colors are there to stay, most of the liquid will be clear (cool, huh??)

It's steamy!

And then after a bath in the washing machine, you get this!

Aw, so pretty!

WOW! A whole afternoon produced my 5 skeins of yarn, dye and washed (drying took over night). I just can't wait to finish a few current projects and get to working with this stuff!