KoolAid Dyeing 101

Mom and I decided to dye some mini skeins of yarn with KoolAid. I've never done this before but it turned out really, really easy! And we had a blast. First, we wound about 20 yards of undyed sock yarn and placed them into a shallow bowl of warm water with a dab of dishwashing liquid . Let that sit for about 30 minutes to 'open' the yarn. While the yarn was soaking, we added one pouch of sugarless KoolAid to 8 oz. of water and stirred till it was dissolved.

We are now ready to experiment!

We put plastic wrap in a shallow microwave plate (I used a pie plate) and made a 'bumper' along the center so I could do two sections of yarn at a time. Squeeze (gently) the soaked yarn and place in the well of the plastic wrap. We spooned dye randomly onto the yarn using whatever colours we wanted. Place the pie plate into the microwave and nuke it on high for 2 minutes. Let it sit for 2 minutes and nuke again if the liquid in the plate hasn't turned clear or slightly 'foggy'. I only nuked this set for 2 minutes and decided it was done. Let it cool entirely - there must be no heat left in the yarn OR the plate. Rinse with tap water the same temperature as the yarn - heat or cold will shock the yarn and cause it to begin felting.

After squeezing out as much liquid as you can, without twisting -it causes felting - hang the hanks up to dry - our hanks were so small that they dried overnight.

Here you have my 4 mini skeins of 20 yards - we used orange, blue, green, and orange. I totally forgot to buy red or yellow KoolAid.

And here are Mom's 4 skeins. They turned out so entirely cool! This is one easy, fast, and fun method to dye your own yarns...it can be done with larger skeins, you might need more than 1 package of KoolAid for each colour, though.

Thanks for stopping by.