Dyeing Wool...Lessons Learned

My mother-in-law gave the Little Man this adorable little shirt to wear this Spring/Summer. I love the colors in it and I thought it would be the perfect shirt to knit up a pair of wool shorties to match. To learn more about cloth diapering and the benefits of wool, click here.I thought the colors in the shirt would be fun to match up and try to dye my yarn using the Kool-Aid dyeing method.

I had looked at some nice undyed Merino wool online, but decided to go with Fisherman's Wool from Hobby Lobby since it was my first wool dyeing attempt. Plus, I had a coupon. Smart move!

First I had to unwind the skein into a hank. I put 2 of our kitchens chairs back to back and secured one end of the yarn to a chair slat.

I wound the yarn around and around the chairs. Little Buddy even helped.

 

So far so good. But here is where I made my first mistake. And it was a big one! I decided that the chairs were too close and that I wanted the hank to be larger. So I took the hank I had already created off of the chairs so that I could put them further apart and start over. This is where a big warning alarm should have went off. Needless to say, the yarn got all a tangled and full of knots and I had to cut it. Gives all new meaning to the name "Little Knit Knots"!

That was really irritating. But I decided to dye what I cut and possibly use it as trim. I finished winding my hank and then soaked it in vinegar water. I couldn't find blue Kool-Aid anywhere so I had to use Wilton's dye for blue, and used Kool-Aid for the red and orange. For more information on dyeing with Wilton's color gels, click here.

I was worried about pots on the stove and not being able to put them close enough to each other, so I decided to go with a hand painted method. I prepped my dyes in these great little condiment containers that I purchased at Wal-Mart. The colors I used were Orange (Kool-Aid), Tropical Fruit (Red Kool-Aid), and Royal Blue (Wilton's Icing). 

Here's is my yarn after applying the dye but before setting it with heat.

Looks perfect! Well, here's where I made a BIG mistake. I didn't roll it properly in the plastic wrap, and all of my colors ran together. My orange turned brown in some places and my blue turned purple in a lot of places. I redyed the blue several more times trying to get it more blue than purple. Note on using Wilton's: make sure all the gel is dissolved. Some clumps ended up on the yarn creating a few dark spots. We'll see how that turns out. Anyway, here is my drying yarn after I was finished.

It's not too bad. Little Man is too young to know he's got purple on. We'll see how it knits up. The circular needles I ordered should be arriving any day now, so I will be able to begin the shorties. I'm sure that will be an interesting experience that I will have many "lessons learned" to share with you. 

Update: To see a picture of how the shorties turned out, click here.