Colors of June

June has been a busy month - at work and at home. We celebrated Tabitha's 15th birthday, Aly got her drivers license (yikes!), and Levi - well he's just been hanging out 'being bored' so far this summer. My husband Mike has been piddling around the yawd (that's his east coast pronunciation of yard) - it looks great by the way. The construction world is moving slowly into the busy season this year - a lot of rain and a slow economy. But things have picked up quite a bit and it looks like July, August, and September will be slammin'.

My knitting projects have pretty much been on hold. I do break out the shawl every now and then and complete a few rows. It is quite large and I have so many different yarns it requires it's own plastic tub for containment - it's not exactly a portable project! What has me distracted is this Kool-Aid dyeing and sweater ripping stuff! It's crazy, cool and I am currently obsessing! Below is my version of Sunburst - Kool-Aid style.

The basic recipe I have been following is the one at the link over on the right side of your screen. I have been using the stovetop method but have had a little felting issue that needs to be addressed. I am thinking that the simmering process is the culprit and that I need to just bring the water/Kool-Aid mix to a simmer or slow boil then add the yarn and turn the heat off. I'm pretty sure it will still absorb the color and possible eliminate the felting.

Here I've dyed Lion Brand's Fisherman's Wool - this is a continuous skein of about 240-yards - so each color is about 40 yards. I used the following for each color:

• Two packets of Kool-Aid (Colors left to right are Berry Blue, Grape, Cherry, Orange, Lemonade, and Lemon-Lime)


• About 10 drops of McCormick's food coloring (Blue, purple.......)


• 12 oz. water


• 4 oz. vinegar


• A dash of salt

After soaking the yarn in hot water for about 20 minutes and bringing my Kool-Aid concoction to just below a boil - I placed the yarn in the Kool-Aid pot and simmered until the color had all (or most all) had been absorbed by the yarn. Then cooled until I could handle it and rinsed with the same water temperature as the Kool-Aid bath. That was it! I still want to play around with more colors and food coloring - I want to try Wilton's as I've read it is a good food coloring with more color choices.

For any readers of my blog - I wish you a wonderful and colorful summer. Happy knitting (if you knit- if not you should try it) - peace, love, hope and joy!