Rainy Day with Kool-Aid

Monday was a rainy day, so we dyed our own yarn with Kool-Aid.  We followed the directions from Knitty, and a good time was had by all.  It helped that the younger daughter wanted to play by herself until it was pretty much her turn anyway, so that made it much easier to coordinate things.  We also used Superwash (Knit Picks Bare Superwash), so the kids could stir the yarn without felting it.
 

My oldest wanted to mix colours, so one of her batches was 2 packages Orange with 3 of Strawberry-Kiwi (I think one Orange would have been plenty, as you can hardly tell there was anything but Orange involved), and the other batch was 3 Lemon-Lime with 3 Blue Raspberry Lemonade.

My younger daughter was left with a batch of Strawberry (3 pkg), and a mix of 2 Grape and 1 Cherry.  She enjoyed stirring the first batch, but by the second batch, my oldest had found the stash of stickers, so they went off to decorate the calendar.

Strawberry

Lemon-Lime-Blue-Raspberry

Orange-Strawberry-Kiwi

Grape-Cherry

With the last batch, I decided the colour was going to be too dark, so I twisted the skein before putting it in the dye to leave some paler patches, and it worked quite well; some spots stayed white, and then absorbed enough dye in the wash to have a tint instead, which I quite liked.

When I washed them after, I simply followed the usual superwash instructions and let the machine agitate, however gently.  While the yarn came out just fine in most ways, it is now a tangled mess, so next time, I'll just let it soak instead.  Now I have some brightly-coloured fruity-smelling yarn to untangle, so between that and 2nd birthday preparations, I should be rather busy for the next while.