How to Keep Warm

I have several hats to keep my head warm in the winter. Unfortunately, since I usually have my hair up, the lumps of hair result in a very odd look. So I searched Ravelry and found the perfect thing - a pony-tail hat (Hannah - Ravelry link). This was a super-fast knit and only took me a day to make. The yarn is Paton's Soy Wool Solids and started as off-white (this yarn is like knitting with twine). First I Kool-Aid dyed it with Berry Blue and Blastin' Berry Cherry. That was a nice deep rose color. Now normally I'm a walking Fashion "Don't" -- but even I didn't like the rose hat with a red jacket, so I overdyed the hat with a Berry Blue/Grape mixture, resulting in a nice mottled look.


The Little A has an even better way of keeping warm -toasting herself in front of the fire. We had to set her quilt back a couple feet, otherwise she would sit inches from it.

Kool-Aid is Addictive

Kool-aid dyeing is really a lot of fun -- no more being stuck with just the colors available in the store. Too bad the resulting colors are (at least for me) somewhat unpredictable!

This started life as an off-white ball of Patons Soy Wool Solids -- cooked with two packets of Kool-Aid (Berry Blue and Blastin' Berry Cherry) in the crock pot. The wool ties came out a much, much darker color -- but since this was a wool/soy blend, it didn't seem to absorb as much dye and came out much lighter.


And this was Patons Classic Wool Merino (again off-white), dipped into four dye pots (2 of orange, 2 of lemon/lime), then overdyed with lemonade.

Something I've Been Dyeing to Do

I've been reading a lot about dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid -- so yesterday I decided to take the plunge.

Not wanting to waste much money, I started with a 48-gram ball of ivory yarn from my stash. I got it for $1 at the Hub Mills Store. The label says it's Sesia Ghibli 100% merino. This was in the odds and ends bin and I assume the label went with the yarn. In any event, it seems to be a sport weight, approximately 130 yards.

Here's what it looked like after I unwound the ball. And these are the two dye pots -- one lemonade, the other pink lemonade. Each is mixed with 4 tablespoons of water (see below, I don't think that was enough).

Next I squirted the dye on the yarn with a turkey baster -- in eight sections. I kind of ran out of dye, that's why I think more water would've been better. Then, onto the stove it went to steam for about 45 minutes.

After it cooled, I washed the yarn and put it on a rack to dry. It looks lighter, but that might just be the lighting where I was taking pictures (no dye was released when I washed the yarn). And finally -- ta da -- the finished product, all wound and ready to knit. Now I just need a pattern. I can't wait to see how it comes out. The yarn looks just like sherbert to me.