Step 1 of Sweater Completed (Dyeing Wool)

A few days ago, I got as far on my Hourglass Sweater as to divide up 10 (50g) balls of yarn from 3 skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's wool for my main color.







After weighing these balls, I arranged the yarn so that the dyeing process would reach all of the yarn. I did this by wrapping the yarn around the legs of a chair and securing it slightly by wrapping the remaining 4-6 feet of yarn around.





I will have to get some strawberry lemonade flavored kool-aid to dye my main color (pink/redish "20"), therefore I won't get to this until I go shopping down the mountain! :)

Update: I experimented a bit too much with my color and it didn't come out just as I would have wished, but it still looks good.



Note to self: when dying yarn for one single project always dye in one lot - otherwise you are going to have slight color variations! :D

Look at me! I'm back to blogging!

It really has been a while, and life just seems to happen when you least expect it. My kids are growing up, I am taking classes, and have very little time for my hobbies. However, I do wish to keep this space for my ideas and inspiration when it comes to knitting, sewing, or any other crafts.

What inspired me to write today was my post about dying wool. I am very lucky to have written all of that information down, because now I can easily refer to it, to find colors for my very own sweater! I am actually going to attempt a knitting project for myself, something I have never done before.

Let's see how long it will take me to complete the Hourglass Sweater by Joelle Hoverson (pattern published in "Last Minute Knitted Gifts"). Link on Ravelry: Hourglass Sweater. Anyone up for a knit-a-long? :)

Of course I will post back my progress over the next few days and weeks.

More dyed Wool! :-)

So I am ready to make a nice wool cover with this yarn! And to show that I can recreate the results of my kool-aid and food color dyeing experiment a while back: here are a few pictures...

Capri Longies!!!

I used my favorite Curly Purly soaker pattern for the waist band and figured out the gusset and legs on my own! :) The yarn is from my dyeing experiment. This was a size large before slightly fulling / felting in the washer (warm for 10 minutes or so and rinsing on cold). Large was too big for him, so I thought felting would not only make them a tad bit smaller but also help with keeping the moisture in! :-D

He has worn them already - that is why the knees are a bit buldged...

Dyeing experiment results..

Well, I dyed some yarn to try to recreate the results with a larger amount of yarn (not just 2 grams). So, I multiplied the amount of dye by how much yarn I wanted to dye each color. I figured since I had a 100 gram ball to dye, I would use four colors and so I was dyeing about 25 grams per color. This means that I used 12.5x the dye as I used for a 2 gram sample.

This is done with food color only, so I am not sure if you can recreate the colors with kool-aid yet.

The colors are very much like the samples! YAY!

Rainbow of Colors

How did I do this? :-)
Well, with kool-aid and food color!

Kool aid is specified by flavor. All flavors Kool aid brand unless marked WM for walmart store brand. Numbered samples are Kool-aid. Letters are food coloring.

Each sample of yarn weighs approx. 2 grams. I used 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 1 cup of water for the Kool aid samples. I used about 3 tablespoons of vinegar (since there isn't any acid in the food color like there is in Kool aid) and 1 cup of water for the food coloring samles. Everything was cooked in mason jars and on the stove top.

Because I used 2 grams every time, I am think you could just add more for a larger amount of yarn. I have not yet tried this, but will be doing so this afternoon!

Abbreviations: WM = Walmart Brand of Kool-aid, teas. = teaspoon


Yellows
A: 5 drops Yellow
17: 3/4 teas. Lemon-aid WM
E: 1 drop Yellow
9: 1/2 teas. Lemon-aid WM




Greens
L: 5 drops Yellow, 1 Green
10: 1/4 teas. Lemon-lime
F: 1 drop Green, 1 Yellow
K: 2 drops Green, 1 Blue
B: 6 drops Green
18: 1 1/2 teas. Lemon-aid WM + 1/2 teas. Lemon-lime
11: 1/2 teas. Lemon-lime
O: 14 drops Green, 6 Yellow




Blues
13: 1/4 teas. Berry Blue
19: 1/4 teas. Berry Blue + dash Orange
N: 6 drops Blue, 1 Yellow
14: 1/2 Berry Blue + 1/8 Grape
J: 1 drop Blue
T: 2 drops Blue
C: 5 drops Blue
15: 1/4 teas. Berry Blue + 1/2 teas. Pink Lemon-aid




Purples
G: 1 drop Blue, 1 Red
R: 3 drops Red, 2 Blue
S: 3 drops Red, 5 Blue
P: 5 drops Red, 15 Blue
2: 1/2 teas. Grape
1: 1/4 teas. Grape




Pinks
23: 1/2 teas. Pink Lemon-aid + sprinkle Grape
20: 1 pkg Pink Lemon-aid + dash Berry Blue
I: 1 drop Red
22: Sprinkle Strawberry
8: 1/4 teas. Pink Lemon-aid




Oranges
21: 1/4 teas. Orange + 1/2 teas. Lemon-aid WM
H: 2 drops Red, 1 Yellow
3: 1/4 teas. Orange
4: 1/2 teas. Orange




Reds
6: 1/4 teas. Strawberry
7: 1/4 teas. Cherry WM
Q: 10 drops of Red, 3 Yellow
5: 1/4 teas. Black Cherry




Browns
Example of the original color
M: 3 drops Yellow, 4 Red, 2 Green
D: 8 drops Red, 3 Blue, 2 Green, 4 Yellow
12: 3/4 teas. Lemon-lime + 1/4 teas. Strawberry
16: 1/2 teas. Pink Lemon-aid + 1/4 teas. Lemon-lime + dash of Cherry WM




This is an example of what you get when you add more food color to the same amount of yarn... darker!

Left: 1 drop
Middle: 2 drops
Right: 5 drops




Another example. The grape Kool aid is very intense.

Left: 1/4 teaspoon
Right: 1/2 teasoon




Orange Kool aid

Left: 1/4 teaspoon
Right: 1/2 teaspoon



I guess I am going to be experimenting further with a combination of kool-aid and food color. I have also seen pastel food colors at the super market, so you can be sure I will be playing with those as well! :-D

Got a little sidetracked!

Ok, Easter is less than a week away, and I a fellow knitter shared link to a wonderful free pattern on Ravelry (you have to be a member to view) for an "Easter basket." It is supposed to be for a knitting tote, but works as a basket as well. I just could not resist dyeing some wool to make these felted baskets. I guess you could argue that it goes along with my felting experiments! :-)

The first one is done, two more to go!

Too much fun with Kool-Aid!

Yesterday I had a lot of fun (in between holding the bucket for poor sick N.) dyeing two skeins of yarn! This is how I did it.

First of all it was very important to keep the yarn somewhat under control, so you don't have a huge tangle to deal with when you are done.

I turned a chair up-side down and used the four legs to wrap the yarn around...




Then I used the last 6 feet or so of yarn to "contain" the wrapped yarn in a tie-dye fashion.




This is what the yarn looked like all wrapped up... pretty!




Next I soaked the yarn in a mixture of water and vinegar and prepared my dyes (here Kool-aid) but I also ended up using Easter egg dye as well...




I used 1 package of orange, 2 packages of grape, 1 package of black cherry (for pink), and 2 packages of black cherry (for red). The pink and red did just turn out to be pretty much the same color in the end though.




Then I prepared an old cookie sheet with cling wrap on it to avoid making too much of a mess...



Then I "painted" the yarn to my heart's desire! Well I started out just wanting a few spots of color here and there, but that didn't work out too well, so I just decided to make the whole skein as colorful as I could...






You can see that the colors bled a bit after being microwaved for 4 minutes (resting for 2 minutes in between). This is when I decided to get out the egg dye and fill in the white spaces with blue and green.




Hanging up to dry by the fire place.




Close up of finished product.




Restrung into a "workable" skein - I can pull it from the middle without too many tangles.




What it looks like with 1x1 ribbing... (this will become my next soaker)!




These are the results of a second skein of wool - I just couldn't resist!