Did you know that you can dye yarn wil Kool Aid? I thought it was pretty neat. If you want to download the turorial, you have to scroll down to the very bottom of the page.
Oops, my bad. I forgot the link. Here it is.
http://www.knitpicks.com/Kool-Aid®+Dyeing+Tutorial_PDDyeingTutorial.html
Yep, but it only works on wool yarn, not acrylics or blends. And you didn’t put a link your post to the page. Knitpicks has a tutorial, is that the one?
It’s also a very expensive way to dye. Try to get another dye.
I haven’t ever used Kool Aid, so I don’t know how expensive it is for a dye, but it is safe for young children to try their hand at dying, which I wouldn’t want to do with the dyes I use.
It’s not that expensive. It’s especially not expensive if you don’t know if its something that you will enjoy doing. I mean, you can always drink the stuff…
I use about 4-5 packs per 2 oz of yarn.
If I buy the Kool-Aid at the Sack N’ Save, it comes out to about 86 cents for 5 packs.
There was a really good Kool-Aid tutorial in the fall '02 issue of Knitty. I like it better than the Knitpicks one.
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=3][COLOR=DarkOrchid]You can dye blends. The cotton or acrylic won’t dye but the wool will. It gives a nice heathered look to the yarn.
KA is not an expensive dye. For around $.30-$.40 you can dye a skein of yarn and have great fun with it![/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
There’s also a thread on Ravelry about someone who successfully dyed yarn with sugared kool-aid and how she did it. In the same thread is someone who dyed yarn with powdered jello.
I bought 12 packs of kool-aid this afternoon. At $0.33 per pack it’s not expensive, I don’t think. I’m guessing at 3 packs per color I want to dye. I got 3 red, orange, purple, and I think I went ahead and got a pink…either that one or blue, I’m not sure. My sister is sending me some paton’s merino wool to try it out on. I wasn’t aware you could do blends, but now that I know, I have some ideas I’d like to work on…
Oh and in addition to the knit picks and knitty tutorials, I found this one to be my favourite.
Kool aid is not expensive if you are dyeing a skein here and there, but for larger quantities, it costs much more than commercial dyes. I haven’t dyed in a while, but it took a lot of Kool aid to get a decent colour whereas a little bit of Ashford dye got a better result. A friend of mine did a dyeing demo a little while ago, I can’t remember what dye she used, but the price was still on it, I think about $2.50 for a bottle. She used about 1/32 of a tsp for a skein, and the bottle must have held several ounces. It takes, for me, at least a package + to dye a skein (4 oz) of yarn, in some cases several packages - so at least $.35 - $1.00+ per skein; I don’t think she spent meore than a penny or so per skein.
I have no problems with Kool aid; it is safe for kids (as long as they don’t drink it, blech), relatively cheap in small amounts, and easily found. But for people interested in dyeing significant amounts of yarn or fibre, there are better options.
I guess what I really like about the Kool-Aid is that it is kitchen safe:
I can use my pyrex casserole dish and measuring cups.
That and I can’t use the powdered commercial dyes while pregnant. If I get into this dying thing, I may make the investment into commercial dyes after the baby is born.