Finished!
Ok, here is my mini step by step guide to the way I did my kool aid wool dying. It is by no means the only way to do it, but I find this way easy and I like the blended results. I was a bit rubbish at remembering to take photos for every single step though, but hopefully took enough for the basic idea.
I did two lots yesterday so I'll show you both of them.
Here's what I started with, a selection of kool aid packages (need to be the unsweetened kind), and some 100% wool which happened to be a cream colour. You can use wool that is already dyed, but you will obviously get different results, a darker grey for example might give you more heathery colours. The kool aid colours are pretty neon, I have to say, I did not do a lot of experimentation in mixing colours yet, just wanted to get a feel for the process and see what I could come up with.
Next, I unravelled some of the wool from the ball around some chairs to make it into long pieces I could twist into chunks. Bear in mind that the amount of wool vs. amount of kool aid affects the result. I did fairly small pieces, as I didn't know how it would come out.
After that, I put the wool on to soak in some warm water with a very small squidge of dish soap in it to clean the wool. Here, my wool is fairly spread out, you can keep it more tied together if you wish, just don't tie it too tight or it will be like tie dye and those bits would dye well (unless you want that effect!).
Some guides said to add vinegar to the water, some said you didn't have to as the kool aid was acidic anyway. I did to the first batch I dyed, but after that didn't bother and it seems to have worked fine. While that is soaking for about half an hour, you can make up your kool aid mixes. Obviously use more packets for a more intense colour, although some of them are pretty intense anyway, such as the Blue colour.
I mainly used two packets of the powder, with not too much water, just a few inches at most. Bear in mind that the powder has the colouring on, and as I found out, it is VERY easy to get the powder on your fingers when opening the packets and if you don't wear gloves, your fingers will get dyed.
Here's the two lots I did, on the left is 2 packets of Grape and 2 of Black Cherry, and on the right 2 packets of Orange and 2 of Cherry.
Once the 30 mins is up, you can drain almost all the water from the wool, just leave it swimming in a bit. If you're going to use the same dish to soak and dye in, make sure it is a microwave safe dish.
Now the fun part. Set you dish somewhere where you can work that is right near the microwave, the less you have to jostle the dish to get it in the microwave, the better. Starting with the lightest colour first, pour in one corner. You can go slow and make sure half the wool is well covered with the dye. I liked to concentrate the colour into one corner. If it hasn't covered quite half you can get a plastic spoon and poke the wool into the coloured liquid a bit to make sure the wool gets dyed.
Here is me having put the Orange side in first.
Then put the other side in, again I concentrated in one corner, and let the two colours mingle in the middle. At this stage I did minimal poking as I didn't want to colours to mix beyond what was naturally happening, I only poked to make sure the wool got covered in the liquid. Here's the Orange and Cherry together, and then the Grape and Black Cherry.
Slowly and carefully, put the dish in the microwave. Cook for 2 minutes, let sit for several minutes, cook 2 minutes etc until the water around the wool is pretty clear, so that the wool has absorbed all the colour. On this one you can still see a bit of colour in the water, but it is still quite clear compared to how it was. Be careful to let your wool sit and cool a bit between bursts in the microwave, and that there is enough water in there, you don't want to be scorching your wool.
Let your wool sit for a few minutes as it will be very hot. Run your hot tap, and when the wool is cool enough to handle, rinse your wool. If you shock the wool with cold water, apparently it will felt.
Squeeze as much water as you can out first with just hands gently, and then roll in a towel and press to squeeze more of the water out. Hang up to dry and voila! You should have dyed wool. It is supposed to be colourfast, but a friend has said that hers did bleed a bit in the wash. I'll probably hand wash my stuff anyway.
Here's the wet versions of the two I made here, and then the dry versions.
I did two lots yesterday so I'll show you both of them.
Here's what I started with, a selection of kool aid packages (need to be the unsweetened kind), and some 100% wool which happened to be a cream colour. You can use wool that is already dyed, but you will obviously get different results, a darker grey for example might give you more heathery colours. The kool aid colours are pretty neon, I have to say, I did not do a lot of experimentation in mixing colours yet, just wanted to get a feel for the process and see what I could come up with.
Next, I unravelled some of the wool from the ball around some chairs to make it into long pieces I could twist into chunks. Bear in mind that the amount of wool vs. amount of kool aid affects the result. I did fairly small pieces, as I didn't know how it would come out.
After that, I put the wool on to soak in some warm water with a very small squidge of dish soap in it to clean the wool. Here, my wool is fairly spread out, you can keep it more tied together if you wish, just don't tie it too tight or it will be like tie dye and those bits would dye well (unless you want that effect!).
Some guides said to add vinegar to the water, some said you didn't have to as the kool aid was acidic anyway. I did to the first batch I dyed, but after that didn't bother and it seems to have worked fine. While that is soaking for about half an hour, you can make up your kool aid mixes. Obviously use more packets for a more intense colour, although some of them are pretty intense anyway, such as the Blue colour.
I mainly used two packets of the powder, with not too much water, just a few inches at most. Bear in mind that the powder has the colouring on, and as I found out, it is VERY easy to get the powder on your fingers when opening the packets and if you don't wear gloves, your fingers will get dyed.
Here's the two lots I did, on the left is 2 packets of Grape and 2 of Black Cherry, and on the right 2 packets of Orange and 2 of Cherry.
Once the 30 mins is up, you can drain almost all the water from the wool, just leave it swimming in a bit. If you're going to use the same dish to soak and dye in, make sure it is a microwave safe dish.
Now the fun part. Set you dish somewhere where you can work that is right near the microwave, the less you have to jostle the dish to get it in the microwave, the better. Starting with the lightest colour first, pour in one corner. You can go slow and make sure half the wool is well covered with the dye. I liked to concentrate the colour into one corner. If it hasn't covered quite half you can get a plastic spoon and poke the wool into the coloured liquid a bit to make sure the wool gets dyed.
Here is me having put the Orange side in first.
Then put the other side in, again I concentrated in one corner, and let the two colours mingle in the middle. At this stage I did minimal poking as I didn't want to colours to mix beyond what was naturally happening, I only poked to make sure the wool got covered in the liquid. Here's the Orange and Cherry together, and then the Grape and Black Cherry.
Slowly and carefully, put the dish in the microwave. Cook for 2 minutes, let sit for several minutes, cook 2 minutes etc until the water around the wool is pretty clear, so that the wool has absorbed all the colour. On this one you can still see a bit of colour in the water, but it is still quite clear compared to how it was. Be careful to let your wool sit and cool a bit between bursts in the microwave, and that there is enough water in there, you don't want to be scorching your wool.
Let your wool sit for a few minutes as it will be very hot. Run your hot tap, and when the wool is cool enough to handle, rinse your wool. If you shock the wool with cold water, apparently it will felt.
Squeeze as much water as you can out first with just hands gently, and then roll in a towel and press to squeeze more of the water out. Hang up to dry and voila! You should have dyed wool. It is supposed to be colourfast, but a friend has said that hers did bleed a bit in the wash. I'll probably hand wash my stuff anyway.
Here's the wet versions of the two I made here, and then the dry versions.
I've not been updating this blog! I'm terrible at keeping up with it. I have a personal journal on Livejournal that I jot thoughts on every day things on, and can just about keep up with that. I should update with a couple of craft related items though....
For christmas I decided I wanted to make an advent stocking set. The idea being we could put treats and toys in for the kids and they could open one each day to see what was in it. Of course I decided to do this at the beginning of November, which didn't give me a lot of time to get it finished, but I managed it with some help from my mother-in-law, Sandy. I made them out of felt and some of them turned out better than others...I may revise some of the designs next year, but overall I was very pleased with the outcome. Here's some pictures.
Shortly after Christmas, on January 16th, I gave birth to our third (and last!) child, Alexander. He's now 8 weeks old and I am starting to use cloth nappies/diapers on him. I used cloth with our first child full time for about 18 months at which point I had our second child and with the two of them, I just couldn't get the hang of doing it all the time, I was too far behind on laundry. I did do it part time on and off with both of them, but eventually it went by the way side.
This time I'm having another go, as I only have one in nappies again, but it's going to take a while to build up a decent stash of nappies, at the moment I'm having to wash the very few we have all the time which is not only a pain in the bum, but quite wasteful on water too. One thing I decided I'd like to do it knit Alex some clothes that will serve two purposes, one I can knit things that will fit over the cloth nappies as most clothes are cut in mind for disposables without extra room, and another purpose can be served in that wool can be used as a water resistant wrap over the nappies to prevent leaks.
I'm very much a beginner at knitting, but I managed to knit a little pair of shorts for him in about 3 or 4 days. I just used a spare ball of wool I happened to have, and a pattern from Tiny Birds Organics, which can be found here. It's for an older baby, so in order for it to fit 8 week old Alex, I decided to go down two sizes in needle, and it fits him perfectly!
In fact, at the rate he's growing it probably won't fit him very long, so I'm going to be making more for him but a bit bigger since it'll be getting warmer outside soon. I'm planning to try and make him some longies too, which will be interesting...I've never used circular or double pointed needles before and I think I will need to! All a learning experience.
With more knitting in mind, I heard about dying wool with kool aid. It sounded like fun, and relatively easy to do, and I'd be able to make things with the wool after.
This is my first two attempts. I got some 100% wool in a cream colour, and different packages of kool aid, which is a vile drink over here...it's super sweet when you get the sweetened type and really bright colours. Different flavours give you different colours. I'm going to be doing a step-by-step account of the way I did it for the next tries, and I'll upload it here.
For the blue green one I used Lemonade for the yellow and Berry Blue for the blue on the other side with the fact it would mingle into green in the middle in mind. However, the blue overpowered the yellow a bit too much, so the colours came out more green than I intended, but I still like the result. The orange one is orange and lemonade for the yellow. I was more careful with trying to keep the orange from overpowering the yellow this time, but I did have some spots that were too tight together and didn't dye, but since the wool was a cream colour originally it actually blends well together.
Here they are wet, and then dry.
Ok, that's it for now. I will try and update more often. Promise.
For christmas I decided I wanted to make an advent stocking set. The idea being we could put treats and toys in for the kids and they could open one each day to see what was in it. Of course I decided to do this at the beginning of November, which didn't give me a lot of time to get it finished, but I managed it with some help from my mother-in-law, Sandy. I made them out of felt and some of them turned out better than others...I may revise some of the designs next year, but overall I was very pleased with the outcome. Here's some pictures.
Shortly after Christmas, on January 16th, I gave birth to our third (and last!) child, Alexander. He's now 8 weeks old and I am starting to use cloth nappies/diapers on him. I used cloth with our first child full time for about 18 months at which point I had our second child and with the two of them, I just couldn't get the hang of doing it all the time, I was too far behind on laundry. I did do it part time on and off with both of them, but eventually it went by the way side.
This time I'm having another go, as I only have one in nappies again, but it's going to take a while to build up a decent stash of nappies, at the moment I'm having to wash the very few we have all the time which is not only a pain in the bum, but quite wasteful on water too. One thing I decided I'd like to do it knit Alex some clothes that will serve two purposes, one I can knit things that will fit over the cloth nappies as most clothes are cut in mind for disposables without extra room, and another purpose can be served in that wool can be used as a water resistant wrap over the nappies to prevent leaks.
I'm very much a beginner at knitting, but I managed to knit a little pair of shorts for him in about 3 or 4 days. I just used a spare ball of wool I happened to have, and a pattern from Tiny Birds Organics, which can be found here. It's for an older baby, so in order for it to fit 8 week old Alex, I decided to go down two sizes in needle, and it fits him perfectly!
In fact, at the rate he's growing it probably won't fit him very long, so I'm going to be making more for him but a bit bigger since it'll be getting warmer outside soon. I'm planning to try and make him some longies too, which will be interesting...I've never used circular or double pointed needles before and I think I will need to! All a learning experience.
With more knitting in mind, I heard about dying wool with kool aid. It sounded like fun, and relatively easy to do, and I'd be able to make things with the wool after.
This is my first two attempts. I got some 100% wool in a cream colour, and different packages of kool aid, which is a vile drink over here...it's super sweet when you get the sweetened type and really bright colours. Different flavours give you different colours. I'm going to be doing a step-by-step account of the way I did it for the next tries, and I'll upload it here.
For the blue green one I used Lemonade for the yellow and Berry Blue for the blue on the other side with the fact it would mingle into green in the middle in mind. However, the blue overpowered the yellow a bit too much, so the colours came out more green than I intended, but I still like the result. The orange one is orange and lemonade for the yellow. I was more careful with trying to keep the orange from overpowering the yellow this time, but I did have some spots that were too tight together and didn't dye, but since the wool was a cream colour originally it actually blends well together.
Here they are wet, and then dry.
Ok, that's it for now. I will try and update more often. Promise.
