Kool-Aid dyeing

I have been pinteresting  and stumbled across dyeing yarn with kool aid. I am so intrigued. I love the idea of dyeing with something so cheap and safe for my kids to help with. I did mention I've got 5 kiddos that love making chaos and messes err.... I mean helping in every way right?

With kids the plan rarely works out, and today that was the motto, with dye on top!

The plan: I made and felted a dozen bow ties. I wanted to use a muffin tin with lots of different colors to make multicolored bow ties. I also had made 2 balls of yarn each about 200 yards to try dyeing
with both Kool Aid and traditional dye. 

Heres our set up:

Yep thats a cup of soup.

A couple half dozen muffin tins to put and make 12 different colors. I was so excited, and so were the kids. They got to decide 6 colors to keep straight and 6 colors to mix. We simply put in 2 envelopes in each muffin spot added hot water (about a half cup) and then let the insanity of 4 kids trying to dye 3 bow ties each run.

I would love to tell you exactly how long each bow tie sat in the dye.... It was about 13 "No, really just pick a color," and 10 times I had to count to 10 so as not to micromanage. Ahhh, sometimes its hard to let my kids be kids even if its not the way I would do it. But each bow tie turned out so cute! I think each one sat for 7.2 minutes .. haha, right! I have  no idea!

Now lets talk about dyeing the balls. It was so fun! I loved trying my hand at making a long umbre! I decided to try to make each ball bright pink fading to blue. one with Kool Aid and one with RIT dye. But instead of following the RIT directions I used it like I did the Kool Aid. So I added the RIT to one container and then added 2 cups of hot water. Then I added 6 envelopes of kool aid to the other container and added 2 cups of hot water.

So.. wool balls float. Who knew! I didn't. So I had to turn them and hold them down, constantly turning them to try and dye them even. And in the end I had red fingertips and beautiful yarn. The Kool Aid went through the yarn further then the RIT die did, probably because I did it my way didn't following the instructions.


What I learned:
- Wool Balls float
 -  Kids will be Kids.... and sometimes the mommy needs to count to 10 to let them.
- Next time dye on concrete, we ended up with muddy mess from rinsing out the dye.
- When dyeing with Kool Aid, the dyed item smells yummy!
- expect dyed fingers:

And the End result:
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Stay tuned! Coming up pictures of the finished bow ties, and the amazing yarn I dyed!