On a recent trip to the United States I picked up some Kool-Aid as I heard and read that it was good to use for coloring or over-coloring yarn. The yarn I started with was a blend of acrylic and wool so I was a bit afraid that the yarn would not take the color, because of the percentage of acrylic. I decided to still give it a shot!
I began the first dye bath using the microwave method. You use one cup of hot water with each package of Kool-Aid. I used 2 packages of blue Kool-Aid and soaked three skeins of yarn but quickly noticed I didn't have enough liquid. So, I went to blue food coloring and vinegar and added more hot water and coloring to the already soaking yarn. I used 2 teaspoons of food coloring with about 3 cups of hot water and about 2 tablespoons of vinegar. When the yarn was completely saturated I gave the solution a few minutes in the microwave to bring it up to temperature and let it sit until it cooled. When I went to rinse it I realized that the yarn wasn't completely saturated and the coloring was uneven.
So, let's try this again! I gave the yarn a second bath in a dye solution. Using instant hot water I added the remainder of the small bottle of blue food coloring with hot water and vinegar. Then I took the yarn skeins and untwisted them so that they were large oval shaped bundles. Then I slowly submerged each of the three skeins into the blue solution. I heated them in the microwave for a few minutes at a time with stirring and submerging between each two minutes in the microwave. After about 6 minutes, I let the yarn bath sit and cool. When the process was finished and cool, the dye water was completely clear and all the dye had gone into the yarn. I was super excited!
Here is a picture of the before and after. The yarn on the left was the original and the yarn on the right is the finished product:
