Knitting Iris

On a brighter note

We did some Kool-Aid dyeing last week with a friend of mine's 5 year old girl and her 3 year old son.  Those two brought their dyed yarn home with them to steam set it themselves so only the yarn that we dyed is in the top picture.  Top to bottom:  R's. E's, with quite a bit of help from me.  Mine, which is dyed only with Switchin' Secret and Grape.

The bottom picture is the sum total of R's knitting since last summer.  Unlike his mother, his interest in knitting waxes and wanes.  He's motivated again by his newly dyed yarn, and he's decided that it will be a scarf for his 1 year old cousin in Seattle.

Thank you to everyone for their comments and thoughts yesterday, as well as other days, lately.  I know things can look pretty idyllic around here.  It always does when you're looking on from the outside, doesn't it?  I don't live in any kind of  utopia, I assure you.  You don't see ME sharing the corners of my home now, do you?  That would be too scary.  You only see such a small slice of my life, as is true for all of you, I'm sure.  We may live in what appears to be such quietude, but I assure you, life is busy and loud and challenging and messy  just about every single day.

KoolAid Dye, Fast or Fades?

A handful of people have asked me if Kool Aid dye is fast or fades.  I had wondered the same. 

Above are the socks that I made for the boys last summer(?) out of yarn that they dyed with me. Below is a picture of them before they were ever washed. They by no means have completely washed out, but they are a good bit more pastel-like than they were.  I regularly wash, and sometimes accidentally dry these ones in the washer and dryer, though.

The Kool-Aid dyed pair that I received in Sockapal-2-za, however, was KnitPicks Color Your Own sock weight yarn which has to be handwashed.  The color of these have not faded noticably at all.  I do tend to wear them less than the boys' socks, though, partly because I like them so much that I want them to last forever and partly because they need to be handwashed.

Kelly related something to me awhile back that she had learned once from a weaving teacher:  that detergents today are so good at what they do, and that they are so well formulated to remove stains, including things like grass stains (think natural dyes!) that they often remove the very dyes that we choose to use on our projects.  So, maybe that includes Kool-Aid dyes, even though they're about as far from natural as you can get, but at least not deadly toxic.

So, I suppose if the yarn that you're dyeing is going to be handwashed, and as long as you set the Kool-aid dye well, either by simmering if a solid color, or by steaming or microwaving if variegated, then you'll probably not be dissapointed.

In light of this, it still didn't stop me from recently picking up 80 packages of Kool Aid on sale at the local grocery store for $4.00!  Is that ridiculously obsessed or what?  Luckily the boys aren't old enough to be embarressed by things like that yet, but I certainly was, feeling the need to explain to people at the check out line what I was up to and that we weren't really going to drink all of it! 

Well, I hope this helps.

Double Rainbow Socks

The Kool-Aid stash now contains packets from all three North American countries.  I stumbled across these while picking up fresh corn tortillas and gouda cheese one day (I thought gouda was Dutch(?) but we found it everywhere).  They are, left to right, Fresa intrépida (Intrepid strawberry), Naranja sensación (Orange sensation), Mora encantada (Bewitched blackberry), Piña maravilla (Pineapple marvel), and Uva lunática (Grape lunatic), all good Kool-Aid-ish names, I'd say.  The Fresqui-Bon and the Zuko aren't for dyeing yarn (they already contain sugar), but for drinking.   One is a hibiscus flower drink and the other a tamarind drink.  They just  happened to be in the same aisle, and since I love to eat fresh tamarinds and hibiscus flowers are the ones that the iguanas were so fond of (they also are used as a natural dye, btw), well, I just couldn't resist.  All were declared as "souvenirs" at customs.

Travelling with 2 children, I didn't want any possibility of having to deal with questions about my aluminum dpn sock needles at security.  It's enough trying to get everyone's shoes and coats off and on without anything else.  Instead, I brought a plastic, circular Denise interchangeable in my carry-on and some cotton yarn for the so boring knitting of dishcloths.  Good thing I did this because we actually needed a one at the hotel for doing our dishes all week (used one not pictured above).  My mom was knitting squares for blankets for graduating high-school students from her church so when she ran out of yarn, she picked up my yarn and made one plain tan and one variegated one for me.

The rainbow sock knit-off is complete!  Socka Color #2419 on the right, Trekking #100 on the right. Both were reinforced in the heel and toe with KnitPicks Essential, Grass.  Both were knitted exactly the same on #2 dpns.  Both knit up at 8 stitches to the inch.   

Verdict:  The Trekking is softer to the touch, but also feels thinner and seems like it won't hold up as well.  The Socka Colori appears to be a sturdier yarn and I still prefer this one as the colors seem to blend together more smoothly, although I feel like I got reasonably matching pairs of socks from of both of these unpredictable colorways.  One pair will be gifted at Christmas, but I'm not yet sure which one.  There is plenty of yarn leftover to make bright rainbow socks for the boys, too.

The flight, by the way was magical.  Looking past the wing, the sunset just kept getting deeper and deeper colored, far more so than the picture above.  After flying up the coast of Baja and California, we landed into L.A. during rush hour, and the city looked lit up like a Christmas tree with strings of highway traffic for garlands.   The rest of the way that night up to Seattle was interesting and beautiful, too, recognizing the lights of San Francisco and Portland along the way and flying by snowy Mount Shasta by near-full-moon light.  There is something still magical to me about flying, something so out of time and place.  And flying up the coast was like a trip down memory lane.  I never realized until now that there's only a small bit of the coast (in Washington state) that I've not seen between about halfway down the Baja Peninsula and about half way or so up the inside of Vancouver Island.  I don't feel like someone who has travelled much, but apparently I have.

I just saw at the local grocery store that they're trying to whittle down their leftover summer stock of Kool-Aid and they're going for 20/$1.00!  Time to take inventory and restock!

Kool Aid Striped Socks

A finished pair.  Never before have I had 3 single socks without a match on the needles.  Now I'm down to only 2 second socks to complete.  Whew.  That feels much better.  So many things to finish so that I can move onto fall projects soon.

I don't know how much wear these will get since they will have to be handwashed, or how long they will last before I accidentally throw one or both in the wash.

I'd prefer to dye superwash sock yarn, but at about a fifth of the price of the off-white Opal I've used before, it was too hard to pass up on the KnitPicks Color Your Own.

They remind me of the colors of fall chrysanthemums, which also reminds me I'd like to pick up a few of them to replace the plants that the deer ate right out of the pots by the front door.

Gone camping and in search of huckleberries and trout.

Stripes!

IT WORKS! 

Here was the first attempt at seeing what this yarn would do as a striped scarf

It reminded me a little too much of that bottle sand art I did at places like the Puyallup Fair when I was a kid.  Remember?  Fun and cheesy in it's own right, but not in a scarf.  Only, I think we added pom pom noses,  googley eyes and feathers to make the bottles into long necked, goofy birds.  I put it on top of my dresser, the white one I had, decorated with 60's daisy stickers. 

After:

Here's what I did:  I rewetted the skein, dissolved a packet of grape Kool Aid in some water, and simmered it with the yarn for awhile. Too bright.  Took the yarn out, added another grape packet, reentered the yarn and simmered it again.  Still too bright.  This time, I got bold and added 2 more packets of grape, put the yarn back in, and then only left it in briefly before pulling the skein out.  TaDa! Nice autumnal shades with a bit of pale lavender where the yarn didn't take the first time.  Now I'm thinking of some sort of striped scarf instead of socks, since this yarn has to be handwashed.  I'll probably use the same number of stitches as I would socks, just to see what the striping will do. 

This evening, I'm premordanting another skein with alum and cream of tartar in preparation for trying this with "natural" dyeing.  Tomorrow, I'll choose and collect the plants and prepare the dyebaths for the following day.  This time around it'll only be 2 colors.

Yarn dries so fast, even in the shade, when the temperature is in the 80's and 90's!

Before:

Enjoy this picture now, for when you see this skein again, it will have been overdyed with grape to tone down the NEON.  The damage has already been done.  It just needs to dry.  I would never have enjoyed knitting this yarn up as is.

Striped Yarn, first attempt

On Saturday, the KnitPicks Color Your Own yarn arrived so here we go:

Following these instructions for dyeing self-striping yarn, I'm using Orange, Grape Illusion, and Lemon-Lime Koolaid.  It's going to be BRIGHT. That is a given.  The jars are artichoke heart jars from Costco. 3 packets per jar.  One 100 gram skein of KnitPicks Color Your Own divided into 3 sections.  If this works, which it should, it's pretty easy.

Hey, Kool-Aid is food?

If you're out there looking for Kool-Aid, have no fear.  You WILL find it.  Just look up.

For something that sells for as little as 10 cents a packet when on sale, and takes up only a few square feet of shelf space, Kool-Aid sure gets a lot of publicity in the supermarket.  Ah ha.  It must be the influence of the Kraft conglomeration at work.  Even though I'm supporting them by buying the stuff, at least I'm not consuming it internally.  It feels a bit subversive, even though it isn't.

Or, if you're looking for some of the more obscure "flavors" for dyeing, you can check out and support the little Mom & Pop stores.  We went for the Friday night buffet dinner in the nearby Amish community this past weekend, where I picked up some Man-O-Mango Berry in the store there.  I bought a few packets of it last summer, and there was still most of a box left this year.  Last year also, I found a few other ones no longer listed currently at the Kool-Aid site at a small store where they have a full row of Senior Parking Only spots right out front and the coffee in the deli is as cheap as the Kool-Aid: 10 cents a cup.

I'm sending off my order tomorrow to KnitPicks for some of the dye-your-own merino, but it won't be back in stock until the end of the month, and browsing everyone else's dyeing adventures.

Dye Job?

Does this count for earth mother's Dye Job Along? It's not yarn, it's green daisies and red beargrass, and it's not really dye, it's food coloring.

I loved the pattern I'm using for my Sockapal-2-za sock so much that I just had to try it in a different yarn.  I tried IK Winter 2004's Retro Rib socks with this yarn, but ripped it because the pattern didn't show up very well.  This is turning out much better, and it's a lot easier to photograph than the dark red Mountain Colors sock.  This is Trekking #283.

After taking the pictures at the top, I brought the flowers inside and placed them on the windowsill behind our couch.  Later in the evening, the boys were doing headstands on the couch, and I was just reaching to move the vases out of the way when R bumped one with his feet and over they went.  Green and red dyed water went all over the couch and the floor.  Luckily, the couch is green leather and wiped clean.  A while later, I picked up this sock to work on it and realized that it was wet and covered in splotches of green.  The spots were pretty obvious, but when it dryed they all but disappeared!  No yarn dyed here today, intentional or not.

Added minutes later:  Oops, I guess you CAN see the green splotches on the foot.  I wonder if it will come out when I wash them.