Kool Aid Dyeing

This morning I wound the wool that I won at the auction on my ball winder. Now I'm trying to figure out a one skein project to make out of it.

My friend is out of town this week, so I taught the Sunday school Kool Aid dyeing class by myself today. That also meant prepping the yarn and the dyes. Here is the wool soaking in a warm water and vinegar bath. After it soaked for a while, I rung out a lot of the water and used a salad spinner to drain out some more water. It was still damp when I put it in a zip lock bag to transport to the church.

I filled these squirt bottles with warm water. I used a funnel to add about a tablespoon of vinegar to them.

I used 3 packages of Kool Aid to make the yellow, orange, purple, and blue dyes. Two packages were used to make the red dye. I added some yellow food coloring for the yellow. The green dye was made from the gel food colors.

Here is the undyed damp wool all ready for the kids to dye it.

I tested the dyes on a paper towel. This also gave me the chance to go over the color wheel with the kids. How to make the secondary colors, and how the opposite colors combined make brown.

There were only three 5th graders in the class today.

They had a lot of fun dyeing the yarn. Instead of a story afterwards, we made matchbook notebooks out of food boxes. They loved it. One boy made 11 notebooks.

The kids did not use up all of the dye. There was at least half a bottle of each color left over. So I was able to dye 2 more skeins in my home today. Here is my purple, orange, and red skein of the fisherman's wool.

Here is my blue, green, and yellow dyed skein. So pretty and very soothing to the eye.

This is the one that the kids dyed today.

After the wool is dyed, the excess water is drained/squeezed out of it. The salad spinner helps with this. Then it is steamed in a large pot on the stove for 20 to 40 minutes, like steaming frozen vegetables. Then it is soaked in some warm water with some laundry detergent for 10 minutes. Then it is soaked again in some warm water minus the laundry detergent for another 10 minutes. Both times I agitated the wool, yet I was careful not to felt it. Then I wrung out the water, and used the salad spinner a few times to remove more water. They are hanging up to dry right now.