NorthCountryFaire

Icelandic fleece dyed with Kool-aid, various mixtures of purple, red and orange.

I have been doing a lot of experimenting with color in the last few weeks.  The top and most of the following pictures are examples of dying with Kool-Aid.  I normally prefer experimenting with plant based dyes, but the only dye plants I have available to me at this time come from the grocery store.  I have been acheiving interesting color combinations by mixing different colored Kool-Aid powders together.  The fleece pictured above was washed, then dyed using various combinations of orange, purple (grape) and red (cherry and cherry punch). I also added alum.  (I don’t think that alum is necessary to make the dye color-fast, but I buy alum in bulk and figured it wouldn’t hurt.)  After the fleece was rinsed and dryed, I carded it with cotton carders and blended the clouds together to spin.

Pictured above is the skein of yarn that resulted.  It is a strong, course Icelandic that I am currently weaving into fabric using a small tapestry loom.

This yarn (pictued above) was spun from white wool roving, then dyed using a combination of red and orange Kool-aid.  It was later knit into a pair of girls mittens that can be seen at my etsy shop here.

I’ve also been using purple cabbage as a dye plant.  Purple cabbage with alum creates a nice baby blue dye with a tinge of purple.  I think that it would be possible to get a purple if put in the dye bath a second time.

The following fleece was first dyed with mint, which created a subtle hue of light green, then dyed with cabbage.