Our Adventures in Kool-Aid Dyeing, or Why My House Smells like Grapes, Limes, and Sheep

So, a long, long time ago, I won a contest on Laura's blog. I was the winner of one skein of dye-your-own sock yarn from Knitpicks. I've been meaning to do something with it for a while, and since it's been so nice out, we could do it outside. Plus, Laura's done some amazing dyeing, so we were inspired. Ok, I was inspired. Olivia's just game to try anything new. So, this past week, we finally did something with it. They were going to be my football socks...since Donnie is big into football, I figured that wearing hand-knit socks in his favourite teams' colours would be my contribution to the game.

So, Rider green and Cobra purple was the plan.I wanted the colours to be very intense, so I used eight packages of each flavour.




It's looking stripy. And bright.

Except I forgot that the excess dye would pool underneath. Next time, I would do this on a cooling rack, so the excess could drip away. Our bright green and purple got a little mixed up, and the end result was a mottled purple and olive green. Not the exact look I was initially going for, but I like the result. And, Olivia absolutely loved it. The only bad part was steaming it to set the colour. The combination of grape, lime and wet wool is a little nasty. I think next time I'll zap it in the microwave.