Yarn and Kool-Aid

What do you get when you combine yarn and Kool-Aid? Some pretty amazing colored yarn. Like spinning, I never thought I would get into hand-dyeing, but now I find myself fully intrigued by the art and science of it. It's another avenue for me to stay connected to the industry that I love and the subject matter you can't shut me up about.  I had pinned and read numerous versions of "How to dye yarn with Kool-Aid" articles and blog posts, and in my usual fashion i have multiple books on the subject do dyeing.  So I took all that I had read, mashed it all together, and winged it.  I used my crockpot.  I added some water turned it on high and added some Kool-Aid.  I had soaked the yarn in some plain water to get it saturated first.  I used some KnitPicks Stroll Bare and some Cascade Heritage in natural to play with.  I wanted my yarn to look like it was sprinkled with confetti when it was done.  

I filled my crockpot with just enough water to mostly cover the yarn, I wanted a little bit sticking out of the water to get, what i thought would result in, the best speckles.  Before adding the yarn I added a base color to the water. I used 3 different colors and left one skein natural.  I let the yarn sit in the 'dye' until the water was clearish and the yarn had soaked it all up.  Then the fun began. I just started shaking different colors one at a time onto the yarn. I would shake some color on then wait for the water to return to clear, then added another color.  Once a color had set I would move the yarn around a little to make sure all sides were covered evenly.  I didn't like how the orange went on and really only used it for the first skein, i found the orange to dissipate and not speckle like the other colors.  I would still use it for a base on future skeins, but not for speckles.  The whole process didn't take very long per skein, but overall it was a good hour or 2 because I did each skein seperately.  After I was happy with the color on the yarn, I squeezed out as much water as i could then ran it under clean water to make sure all the residual was off, then I hung it over a plastic hanger and hung it in the shower to dry. In hindsight, I should have soaked it in some wool wash before hanging it up to dry.  I can't wait to wind it up, and knit with it.