Tasty yarn

Rather than whine about being sick, how about some photos of my kool-aid yarn dyeing experiment?  This is grape and cherry, and just for the record, you need a fair bit of kool-aid to dye this much yarn (8 packs of cherry for 105g of yarn, 10 of grape for 125g of yarn)!

Still, I'm pleased - nice vibrant colours.  The grape isn't as fully saturated as I would like, but I'm hoping it results in a heather-like look, rather than an incomplete dyed-look.

I have more of this yarn to dye, but I think I'll wait until I start a project and see how much I need of what colour.

White Yarn

Like most knitters/crocheters... I have a yarn stash. It's tucked away in a few different places so I never see it all at once and have to face that I have a problem. One thing that has nagged me about my stash are the batches of natural coloured yarns I have that I'm not interested in using. I picked a bunch up from a former weaver, but didn't use them in my weaving projects. I thought I might try dyeing some of it and Kalin (fellow Maked girl) suggested I do a test with kool-aid dyeing, to see if that would work (some of the fibres are of unknown content, and kool-aid dyeing works best on natural fibres like wool).

So I did! I read a tutorial on kool-aid dyeing, watched a youtube video tutorial, and did it. Easy peasy! And now I know one of my fibres takes kool-aid colouring super well, one takes it in a more pale way (soy/acrylic blend), one took it very pale (cotton, I think), and two others don't really take it at all (which means I need a different kind of yarn dye, or I need to donate the yarn to someone else who will use it).  And, as a bonus, my kitchen smells like cherry kool-aid.

In the next day or two I'm hoping I can find time to dye the large batch I have that sucked up the kool-aid colouring so well - it's a great yarn, from a thrift store sweater I unraveled! I'm excited at turning it into a colour and actually using it to make something finally!  (I used some of it, au natural, in a weaving project a while back. More photos here.)

Fairly Tired

Thanks to everyone who came out to Got Craft on Sunday - it was crazy busy, like usual!  I'm going to give you a secret tip... the trick to avoiding the crowds (i.e. where you practically have to stand in line to even look at a table) is to arrive at 4pm. The fair goes until 5pm, so you'll have a good hour to shop, and you'll be able to stroll around leisurely and see whatever you want - no need to elbow someone out of the way! It's very calm and civilized in the last hour. It's up and down during the other hours - you might get lucky and be there during a lull, but at 4, you'll be set.

Maked had a good day. Hopefully our stuff will make people happy. I always love the people who admit they're buying something for themselves - it means they loved something so much they broke their own rule about buying for themselves - that's pretty satisfying for a maker to hear!