I have recently knit a blanket square for a member of a group who is very ill. I used the white Shelridge Farm worsted weight left over from the Toronto Maple Leafs socks I did for my brother. But white is kind of dull so I decided to try dyeing with Kool-Aid.
I had no control over what colours I had in the house because I don’t do grocery shopping. I had only managed to convince he-who-does-grocery-shopping to buy Kool-Aid because it would be used for dyeing. Anyway he bought grape, cherry, orange and lemon-lime (only one packet of the latter but I hate green so that’s fine with me). I decided to use all of them.
I reskeined the yarn and put it to soak in warm water and vinegar. I got out the 9″ x 13″ baking pan (this is Kool-Aid so I felt safe to use things I also use for food). We mixed up the different colours in large yogurt pots (the kid made a minor error and put some of the orange in with the cherry — 2 cherry, 1 orange).
I gently squeezed the yarn and put it in the pan spreading it out relatively evenly. Then I slowly poured the colour over different parts of the yarn. Lots of grape, lots of cherry, small bits of lemon-lime usually next to the purple (or even filling in little blank spots in the purple), reasonable amount of orange. I panicked about the amount of grape and had the kid make up some more but I didn’t use all of it. Then I put it in the oven on 250F for one hour, leaving it in there to cool after the oven turned off. Rinse. Spin in the machine. Hang to dry.
I have to admit that I wasn’t so sure this would look good at various points in the process. But when I wound it into a ball, I was more convinced. And knit up it was very nice. The green is just little spots. Fine for me. And the purple is really deep and dark. Where it mixes with green or orange there are some really warm shades of brown, again only little bits. Real depth. I knit the square using a lot of moss stitch because I find that the texture works better with multi-coloured yarns than plain stockingnette. Yes it pools but somehow that looks better in a textured stitch.
That pot of extra panic grape just sat on the counter for a couple of days. I figured it should be used but I was busy with other things. Then the other day, I decided to just get on with it. I grabbed a length of that Blue Faced Leicester top that I bought in England. Pulled it apart a little to loosen the fibres. Soaked it in that baking pan in some vinegar and water. Drained the water. Poured over the grape Kool-Aid stuff. Stuck it in the oven.
Amethyst. That is the colour it turned out. Very pretty. Of course I have no idea how much grape Kool-Aid nor how much wool so replication will be a bit of an experiment but I’d say this is a weaker solution than Norma uses to get her very deep reds and oranges. If you went too weak you’d probably get a very nice lavendar though.
Yesterday I spun it up using the heavier spindle to try to get a reasonably thick yarn. Because I didn’t dye much of the top, I also spun up some white and plied them together. It looks great. I have about 50 yards like that. when I got to that point, the spindle was getting a bit heavy and the singles were breaking. It was also apparent that there was more purple left than white. I decided to ply the remaining purple against itself to use for a solid stripe with that heathery stuff. I have about 10 yards of that.
I see a hat in my future. I’ll start at the crown and work down to the brim. That way, when I run out of the amethyst stuff, I can finish with a white brim.
