And Now, for Something Completely Different: Dying Yarn With Kool Aide®

"Homestead Series How To Dye Wool Yarn With Kool-Aid"

HomesteadAcres, YouTube (September 23, 2009)
video, 11:25

"A new hobby of mine is dying yarn. You can easily dye wool with kool-aid or food coloring. In this video I'm using kool-aid.

"Step 1. Put 1 to 2 inches of luke warm water in your crock pot and a 'glug' of vinegar. Place your skein of yarn in the crock pot....

The narrators tell you that this isn't the most color-fast dyeing process around: so you'll have to be careful about washing the yarn later.

These folks do something the Lemming wouldn't have thought of: using two different colors in the same bowl. The yarn is being dyed red on one side, green on the other side of the bowl. Since the bowl is nearly full of yarn (and water), there's surprisingly little mixing of the two colors.

The video talks about another time, when there were four colors: green, orange, blue and brown. That could have been one colorful set of yarn.

This process isn't likely to put commercial yarn dying outfits out of business: there's a lot of labor involved. But as a sort of home craft project - particularly for folks who knit some of their own clothing - this looks practical.

The Lemming appreciated the last words in the video: "Have fun."

(Kool-Aid^® is a registered trademark of Kraft Foods. And has its own website: Kool-Aid.)