Dye Another Day

Yesterday the Kool-Aid fit came upon me again, and I decided to try dyeing a couple of sock skeins with two colors to make a self-striping yarn. After a little more quality time with the niddy noddy, I chose a packet each of Berry Blue Twist and Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid.

My niddy makes a skein with about a 48" repeat, so I decided to just fold the skeins in half & dye each half separately. However, most of my large Pyrex ware is still packed up; I had to improvise. I mixed each packet of Kool-Aid in about 2 cups of warm water & divided that between two 16 oz. drinking glasses. I then jammed half of each skein into a glass. This doesn't make for a particularly even dye job -- the yarn really needs a little more room to float around in the dye bath -- but it was the best solution that I could come up with that didn't involve buying more casserole dishes. Between the two glasses, there was a little length of yarn that didn't go in the dye, but I decided it looked OK like that. I could have filled the glasses to the brim to lessen it, but I'll just call them 3-color socks instead.

I then put it in the microwave & nuked them for three 2-minute rounds, stirring the yarn between each round. Yes, my kitchen is firmly stuck in the 50's.

In the meantime Friday, being the love pig that she is, came and hung out in the kitchen in the hopes that someone would notice the cat meowing loudly on the counter and give her scratches.

After washing, rinsing, and rolling in a towel, the skeins are hung up to dry. They have a lovely water-color look. The unevenness of the dye job looks like intentional varegations; the colors ripple from light green, dark green, back to white, then light and dark blues. I'm going to knit these up in a waved-cable pattern to continue the water theme.