Knitting Dragonflies

In the attempt to get a different look to my dyed yarn, I tried to dip the yarn into separate dye pots. Wow, I love the look, clean colors, more definition.  I used this article from Knitty to guide me. Of course it is more work. My hats off to all of you who hand paint yarn! I started with some vibrant shades of violet and green. I couldn’t find what I wanted and ended up using this tutorial on food coloring. From Spindle and Wheel. I used the Neon food colors that I found at a baking shop. They came in a paste. The mixing was quite a bit of trial and error. To come up with the right color and salt/vinegar mixture, this resulted in lots of little bundles of dyed yarn, and several pages of notes. I wanted the colors fairly close together to get a nice repeat when knitted. Wheee…This really exercised my arm muscles, dipping into the green, I tried to make five different bands of color. Then the purple, also five bands. Then wrap it all up into saran wrap and microwa...

I saw this sweater on this front of Knitscene Fall 2009 and decided to make it, but  with a twist of colors, minus the belt (why place a belt over your pattern area?). Deciding on blue I picked out some Blueberry Kool aid, then offset it with Lime Kool Aid. I did this in a three step solar dyeing process. For more info on my solar dyeing see this post . (more dyeing how to info links here ) Wet your yarn (natural fibers take up dye better), thoroughly, soak at least 15 min in warm water. While you are waiting for the soaking. Dissolve your Kool Aid packets in warm water (or the same temp. as the water you are soaking your yarn or fiber in), standard amount is 1 package of Kool aid per oz of fiber or yarn. Less Kool aid=lighter color, more kool aid=vibrant. 1-Solar dye my yarn with the Blueberry Kool Aid, I used 5 packets per 4 oz of yarn, dissolved in 4 cups of water. (I use a sun tea jar, I know many people use canning jars) After this is dissolved, gently place your ya...

I got some plain yarn, it is beige Lion Brand 100% wool, kind of boring. 24 oz of it. I want to knit this , from Knitty. Imagine by Karen Alfke who blogs here Abakini, better living thorough knitting. Notice that there is green and blue Kool Aid, in the background. Because, yes, I am officially obsessed with Kool Aid dyeing. I wound it off into 4 oz hanks. And then cooked up some lemon-lime Kool aid, I used 5 pkgs. per 4 oz of yarn. I decided to solar dye the yarn, since it is 93 here and sunny, and I found some sun tea jars on sale at Wal-Mart. I let it “cook” until the water was clear, then let cool until room temp and  rinse and drained it well. This took about 6-8 hours in full sun. Let cool and then rinse in cool water. Hang to dry.   Very green, but I wanted a little variation in color. I used blue Kool Aid, and used 2 pkgs. per 4 oz hank of yarn. I had a brain storm of applying it with a salt shaker. . Make sure you yarn is just barely damp, not se...