I dyed some wool using Kool-Aid (an American soft drink). I followed the instructions in a book called Kids Knitting by Melanie Falick (we Melanies are a darned talented bunch aren't we?). I won't reproduce her directions because they're copyright. If you want to dye yarn with Kool Aid without buying the book there are several sets of instructions on the Internet, for example at Knitty.com. Kool-Aid is not an everyday item in the UK and I had to buy some from KoolaidUK.com. I wonder if you can dye yarn with Ribena?It was quick, easy and fun, and very effective. I was amazed at the depth of the colours, especially the purple from the grape flavour and the red from the cherry flavour. One amazing part of the process is that the coloured drink turns colourless as all the colour is taken up by the yarn. That was fun to watch. It also means there is no long tedious rinsing out of excess dye at the end of the process. Just a quick rinse in clean water then hang it out to dry. And the dyed yarns smell fruity, although presumably that vanishes the first time you wash it. It makes knitting with it fun, though.
There are other projects in Kids Knitting that I want to try. Watch this space.
11 comments:
Terrifying to think what those beautiful colours do to children's insides!
Great post - will you show us the finished knitting?
Joanna
I'm perfectly healthy and I drank it non-stop as a child. :-)
Wow, these colors are beautiful. Kool-Aid, who knew?!
joanna - keep in mind the color is highly diluted before it is consumed. (Of course, it's no less artificial!)
Mel - Not knowing what Ribena is, I'd guess that any powdered drink mix WITHOUT SUGAR should work. Sugar will make your yarn sticky. We have a couple of brands of this type of drink mix in the US and they all work to varying degree.
I understand that Wilton's cake decorating colors, Easter egg dye "pills", and regular liquid food coloring also work. I've only ever used the Kool-Aid, myself.
Click on my name to see some projects I've done with Kool-Aid yarn!
That's amazing - what are the ingredients in Kool-Aid???
Have you ever read "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?" Their Kool-Aid had an extra ingredient...
Blackcurrants would probably make a good dye. Rather than mess about with Ribena, how about growing blackcurrants (they take really well from cuttings) and using a cheap mordent like salt?
This page looks quite good
http://www.textilearts.net/features/
techniques/naturaldyeing.php
Also perhaps yellows from turmeric would go well with blackcurrant colours?
Marigold - I bet your kidneys are orange though!
Alice: I thought that was the effect of the Tang drink mix!
Alica, I made a wool bracelet for my dad ages ago, dyed with turmeric, onion skins, and beetroot. The turmeric has past the test of time, the onion skin yellow faded first.
Anytime you need some Kool-aid, just send me an e-mail and I will drop some in the mail for you!
Thanks, Marjorie. The ingredients seem to be "artificial colour, artificial flavour, artificial smell and artificial preservative". So it's no surprise it syarn, it's the food colouring that does it.
Good point about sugar making yarn sticky. There are no such thing as powdered drinks in the UK as far as I know. They all seem to come as concentrated syrup that you dilute, and they all have sugar (or some other sweetnener) added.
Ribena is a famous brand of concentrated blackcurrant drink. I make my own at home from blackcurrants I've cooked and strained and frozen into ice cubes. One cube of frozen blackcurrant plus one litre of apple juice plus one litre of water makes 2 litres of home-made apple and blackcurrant drink with no artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners, sugar, or anything else. And even my fussy kids are just as happy to drink it as the stuff you buy in the supermarket.
I'd love to experiment with natural dyes. It's on my to-do list. But I don't know if the purple colour of fresh blackcurrants will hold in fibres or will it fade to brown? Blackcurrants have been around for millennia, but I understand that purple cloth was very expensive and rare until chemical dyes were developed last century.
Thanks for the offer of Kool-Aid, Marjorie. I might take you up on that. We wanted to do blue, but Sam had already drunk the raspberry flavour and we don't have any more blue sachets.
Melanie - check your library for this book: "Wild Color: the complete guide to making and using natural dyes" by Jenny Dean, published in 1999. It is the most comprehensive book on this subject that I have ever seen, yet it is very hard to find (at least here in the States).
Your yarn turned out beautiful. Is it color fast now? That would be my only concern. The colors sure are pretty!
Post a Comment