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Yarn been tangoed

When I was at KnitNation last month I was chatting to Andie from Renaissance Dyeing (who make gorgeous yarn) and mentioned I'd experimented with dyeing with carrot tops. When she exclaimed "oh you get such a gorgeous silver green with carrot tops" I looked puzzled and a little disappointed and told her about my dayglo yellow yarn. Andie recommended adding Cream of Tartar and more vinegar which I dutifully did the next time I had a bundle of carrot tops from my allotment. Here is the yarn I got. The yarn on the left is Bluefaced Leicester and the right is superwash merino.

Carrot top yarn

It has a greenish tinge but lets face it, this is still yellow yarn. I like yellow, I don't want loads of it in my stash. On our day to to Eastbourne @Goldenblades91 and I were talking about dyeing and she mentioned Kool Aid dyeing. I have a stash of Kool Aid so decided to experiment over the yellow yarn.

 People drink this?

I figured I couldn't go wrong if I stuck with colours that blended with yellow so I picked out oranges, mixed up solutions with just orange Kool Aid, orange + a smidgen of purple and orange + red. 

Kool Aid yarn

I split the skein of superwash yarn into thirds and did a third in each colour allowing the middle portion to take up less dye. Superwash is incredible and sucked up the dye within seconds. Here is the result unwound...

Kool Aid yarn

.... twisted into a nest...

  Kool Aid yarn

and reskeined.

  Kool Aid yarn

I love it and am now decided which sock pattern to make with it. I also dyed the Bluefaced Leicester yarn but need to take some decent photos of it before I show you.

While I'm happy with my new yarn my flat smells like it's been Tangoed!


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Anonymous said…
Wow! This is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It will make lovely socks.
22 August 2011 at 13:28
Ros said…
Beautiful!! I love Kool Aid dyeing - so easy and so much fun. If you look on the backs of the packets you can see the base colours they use - red, blue and yellow - and use that to work out how to mix them up.
22 August 2011 at 13:33
Anonymous said…
My daughter has tried Kool Aid dying and the house smelled awesome. I love the orange! Faboo!!
22 August 2011 at 14:35
Emma said…
That's brilliant! I've got a nice selection of kool aid colours to use up but need some more yarn first. A few weeks ago I re-dyed a skein I had first done with blue food colouring that I didn't like. It looks so much nicer now with kool aid!
THanks for the mention :)
23 August 2011 at 11:57
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