Speckle Dyeing Yarn with Koolaid

Hi, you guys. Welcome to our live event. My name is Brenda KB Anderson and I'm very excited today to teach you guys all about speckle dying with Kool aid. Now, I know we've already got some questions popping in here. Anne Maria is wondering like, won't this just wash out in, in the wash and it will not. I know that it's hard to believe. I honestly did not really believe how well this was going to work before I did it. And um just to tell you a little bit about my background, I come from the costume industry and I had worked for, I don't know, probably 10, somewhere between 10 and 15 years as a professional dyer amongst other things. Um So I've dyed lots very wide variety of things. Um I, my main focus was not yarn, I to dye some yarn, but it was a totally different process. We were dying acrylics and it's just not at all the same as this, but I do come from a dying background and I was very shocked at how well this worked. I, I had been seeing some tutorials. I knew that you could dye wool yarn with Kool Aid. But I just, there was a little part of me that was like, I don't really believe that, but then I tried it and I was like, I can't believe this. I still can't believe this, that it happened right in front of my face. So I you guys will just have to try it for yourself and see, but I'm gonna be doing this live tutorial so you guys can ask questions, you can see my process. Um And hopefully we'll have a little bit of fun here. Ok. So the first thing you need to know is you are going to need some kind of wool yarn. There are other like animal fibers also, silks would probably work, but I have not tested those very much. Um So you have to do your own digging for information on that, but uh 100% wool be your best bet I'm gonna be using. This is a super wash merino wool. You don't need to, you know, you don't need to be so fancy pants about it. You could just get like some kind of wool from the a big box store even has that. It's great to go to your yarn store and look at their wool selection. There are some um online retailers that sell lots of lighter colored bear yarn that you know yarn that does not already have dye in it. Um Those are great to use too, but if you just wanna go raid your stash and you want to do a little over dying. You, if you find a lighter color, your speckle dyeing will show up on that. Let me just show you what that looks like. So I did a little bit of speckle dying on this yarn. This is what it looked like before I dyed it and then I just added some speckles to it. It's a lighter color so it shows up really well. Um So you can certainly, that is certainly an option as well for you. So, you know, you don't even have to necessarily go out and buy anything if you already have some wool at home, just try it out. Um So like I said, it needs to be a wool yarn, but it could be a super wash, it could be a non superwash. I myself prefer dying super wash because I feel like most of the time the colors pop just a little bit more on the super wash yarns. Um But it still shows up well on the other, you know, on just regular wool that's not super wash. So I don't wanna uh discourage anyone from using that. Um This is a super wash, it's a Merino. Um And, and the other yarns that I'm gonna be showing you later, those are also, they're not Merinos, but they're, they are superwash wools. I think all of them are. Yes, they all they are, they are all super wash. I'm showing you super wash today. OK? So the next thing you're gonna need of course is the Kool Aid. So there's lots of different colors of kool aid. And I wanna just point out this was not obvious to me until I first started um opening up a Kool Aid packets, but sometimes the background color on the packet is not the color that the drink is going to be. OK? So keep that in mind. Let me see if I can find one that's just not at all the same. Oh Shark Berry fin. That is a pink color. So that is actually closer to the background color. But then there's this lighter color and you think it might be a light turquoise but it's not so don't be fooled by shale berry you guys. Um but there are some like tropical punch, for example, it is not turquoise like this would maybe make you think it is a reddish color. There are lots and lots of different reds and oranges in Kool Aid I've found um and not quite as many of the cooler colors. So you have to be paying attention to that. I'm gonna be using blue raspberry, lemonade, lemon lime pink, lemonade and pina pineapple today um in this tutorial, but I've tried out lots of different colors. It's just really fun to experiment and see what you see what you end up with. OK. So you're gonna need some Kool Aid. Packets. And if you're just speckle dying, you really only need a small amount like you could dye probably two skeins of yarn with this amount of, of Kool Aid. Um If you're just speckling it, if you're doing solid colors, which we're not really gonna get it into in the live because you don't really have time. You're definitely gonna need more Kool Aid, but you can certainly do that. You can dye solid color, you know, dye your yarn with solid color. You don't just have to speckle it, but I'm just gonna be showing you speckling and this and if you guys are interested in more Kool Aid techniques, then let me know in the comments section because I love experimenting and I've been doing lots of experimenting with Kool Aid and and wool yarn. So I'd be excited to show you more things if you guys are interested. Ok. So um the next thing to think about is how you're going to prepare your yarn. So if your yarn comes in a skein or a ball or something that is not a hank. So this, this is a hank so you can open it up and it becomes this big loose loop of yarn. This is what you want because you need to have access to all those little strands. You can't just dye a skein as it is all balled up. Um If you're trying to speckle it because you're not going to be able to get to the inside of it. So if you have a skein or a ball of yarn, you can wind it around, you know, some, some family members arms that are sticking out like this or around the back, you could put two chairs together and wind it around that or if you're flexible enough, you can sit with your knees up and wind around your knees. Um So you have this big loop and then you have to tie it together loosely. So that way you're not going to end up with a big tangled mess. So this one is already tied together in a couple of places because that's how it comes. Um But I'm gonna show you how to add the ties just in case you are making your own hank here. So you should be using, this is actually a wool yarn, but you should be using a sturdy cotton yarn. I just happened to have this, I forgot to bring my cotton yarn with me. Um Use a sturdy cotton yarn because that way you can kind of pick it up by these ties when you're trying to get it out of the, out of the, um, like when you're washing it out in the sink, when you want to pick it up, you can rely on those ties to not break. Also, you wanna make sure it is something that is microwave safe because we are going to be using a microwave to heat set this dye. Um, so that way you, it has to be cotton or wool so that it's not going to melt or combust or some other horrible thing. So, if you're gonna be adding some ties to your yarn, as you kind of lay it out flat, you're going to, it's almost like sewing. So you're going to divide this into three sections, one, 23 like this and then you're going to put your yarn tie underneath and then over and then under like that and then you're gonna come back with that and you're gonna go over, under, over so over, under, over and then you can tie that together, just do a little overhand knot here. And I like to tie my yarn into at least, you know, in at least three places. Um, it makes it a little easier if, you know, for things to not get tangled. If you have more. The one downside to tying your yarn is, if you do it too tightly, it's an area where you're not gonna get as much speckling, which is fine. I mean, it'll still look nice. It's ok if there's, you know, some little sections where there isn't as much because if you think about it, this is, you know, big loops of yarn and when you crochet it up or knit it up, it's not necessarily going to end up. Um, the pieces of yarn are not gonna end up right next to each other. So if you do a, a blob of color here, all of that is not gonna end up crocheting right next to each other because they're on separate strands of yarn unless you're doing some kind of planned color pooling situation. But that's another subject for another day. Ok. So you're gonna wanna loosely tie your yarn. So that way you have these big loops of yarn that, you know, are manageable, um, And are not gonna get tangled when you get them wet, when you're washing them out. All right. So then the next step is you're going to put them in a bowl of water. Hopefully you can just do that before you go to bed the night before. So they can soak overnight. That's the best way to do it. Um But I have dyed yarn before that I've only soaked for an hour and it was still fine. Um, but I do prefer to soak it for a longer amount of time. I actually put two skeins of yarn in here to soak last night. So they've been soaking, you know, quite a long time. Um So we're ready to go with that and then, um, you can think about what you want to use in your kitchen to create your speckles. I'm, I like this. This is a little basting tool that I have. Um, but I couldn't find, I bought this probably at least five years ago and I couldn't find the exact one online that I could recommend to you guys. So I just looked and I saw tons of these basting tools. Um They're, they're more of a brush and they have much smaller pieces and I was worried it would be too thick of a line there. So, what I did was I took scissors and also it's kind of a little bit floppy, which I didn't like. I just took a pair of scissors and cut through, chopped it off. So they're nice and stiff here. And then I separated some of the bristles peeled back a layer to the front, a layer to the back and cut out the middle section. So if you look down on this here, you can see that right there. There's a little space between, so it kind of makes two little dotted lines which I kind of like. Um, I just wanted to find a way that I could disperse and have smaller speckles and not too big of areas. But this is one of those things where it's really fun to play around with stuff. Having a big chunk of color is not a problem. You know, it's not gonna be, it's not gonna wreck your, your yarn. It could be like a really good design decision for you. You know, I don't wanna discourage anybody from doing that. Another thing, most people just have a fork and you can certainly use a fork. So I'll be showing you how to just use a fork to do this as well. That's no big deal. Um, it doesn't have to be a plastic fork. It could be a metal fork, whatever kind of fork you have. And then I find some little dishes that I had. The cool thing about this is that it's Kool Aid and not actual, you know, fabric dye. So I am just using act, you know, just dishes that I have from my kitchen to put the Kool Aid in. Um, and then I'm using some little mason jars for just a little bit of water and that's to kind of clean out my, um, my whatever tool it is and also to get it a little bit damp so I can pick up the dry powder, which we'll get to in a minute. Um, you're also gonna need your microwave and, uh, there is, if you don't have a microwave, you can do this in the oven. Although I am not exactly sure how long to put it in for, you need to have your piece steaming, but we're gonna be using plastic wrap. So you might have to do a little Googling to find out about what temperature but something lower, like maybe like 200 maybe even lower than that. Um, and maybe for like a half an hour or something like that. Just to give you a yes. But I would do your own research on that. You can, you can certainly do this. Um, you can steam set it in, in the oven. You can also do this in a steamer basket. If that's easier. If you have a steamer basket like on a kettle, you can steam set it that way. Um, but I'm just gonna be using a microwave because it's really quick and easy and self contained. It's fun. Ok, let's see. I'm gonna just check in here and see if we have any questions. Um Can you use Kool Aid to dye synthetic yarns or is it only effective on natural fibers? You, the these will not dye um acrylic yarns, acrylic yarn is notoriously difficult to dye unless you are using fairly harmful dyes. Let me just say that um the kind of dyes that you wouldn't want to have in your own kitchen. So I do not recommend people to dye acrylics at home. Uh You might be able to get away with staining it a little bit. I've even seen some tutorials where people are using thin down acrylic paint, but you're not actually dying the fiber, it's kind of coating or painting it and it changes the texture. So I do not recommend that um the Kool Aid is definitely not gonna work. It may very lightly stain it possibly. Um But I don't think it's gonna be wash fast, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it. Um I would just stick to Wolves for this for this project. Um When Anne Marie is saying you can use toothbrush. Yes, you can definitely use a toothbrush. Yeah, any little bristly thing that you can use to pick up dry powder, you can even, you, you can even just use your fingers to Sprinkle the dye powder on. Um, you might wanna put gloves on though because you're gonna stain your fingers, which I mean if you've ever made Kool Aid before, you know that your fingers are just gonna be a funny color for about a day. Um A patty Henry saying I've used Easter Egg dye but not Kool Aid. Looking forward to learning how to speckle, how to speckle some yarn. Awesome. Yes, you can use Easter egg dyes. You can also use like Wilton um food dyes, you know, uh just food coloring. You can use that as well. But if you are using other dyes that are not Kool Aid, you need to add a uh an acid to it. So you'll need to add a little bit of vinegar like maybe three tablespoons for a hank of yarn or something close to that. You can add that into your soak water like while your yarn is soaking in the bowl, you can just add that in there and mix it around and let it soak with the vinegar in it. You're gonna need that acid in order to for the, the dye to kind of bond with the, the wool fibers. The reason we don't need that for Kool Aid is because it has citric acid in it. So there's your acid already. It already comes in the packet. You don't need to add anything else. That's what makes Kool Aid dying. Like, just crazy easy. It's so, so easy. All right. Plus it's fun and it's fun to do if you have kids or grandkids, it's really fun to do with them. My kids were dy, have been dying yarn over the last couple of days and my niece came over and she dyed some yarn and they made really, really pretty stuff. So I highly recommend doing it with kids. Uh If you got some around. Ok. So I'm gonna start by just putting my dye powders into these containers just using the blue raspberry here. I'll put the the packet behind it so that I can keep track of which diet is which lemon lime. The other good thing about this is it, well, it looks like that was a little wet already. That's ok. Um The other thing about dyeing kool aid is it smells really good. It doesn't ha doesn't have bad stinky dye odor. It smells like, you know Kool Aid. It's like the smell of childhood summers, which is I think what made me think of doing this live because I just love, I don't know, feeling nostalgic about the summertime. All right. Um One thing I wanted to say is there are certain dyes that work better than others like black cherry is a really good one if you want to have a dark solid color. Um the lemon, which is I think the only bright yellow that there is that doesn't have an orangey tint to it. Lemon, let's see. Lemonade, sorry, lemonade. It's a pretty color but it does not get nearly as saturated. It takes a little bit more dye. Um So just know that there, you know, you'll just have to experiment with the different colors you want to use and um some of them are much brighter than others. OK. So put these here. All right. So I'm going to be using a, a big piece of this plastic wrap. Oops, it got stuck to my tape. Here we go. Um This is gonna be my work surface. You need to have this in order to set your dyes as well too. So you wanna make a big long piece of it, that's longer than your hank of yarn when it's stretched out and you can set that down on your table. You can tape it in place if you feel like you need it to be taped in place. Otherwise, once you get that wet yarn on there, it usually stays in place pretty well. All right. So I'm gonna pull out one hank of yarn and I'm picking it up here by the cotton uh tie. You can see what I mean. And I always kind of look to make sure I'm getting all the loops and what you want is you want this to be, you know, damp, slightly wet but not dripping. You don't want it to be leaking water on your plastic wrap. So, um, I'm gonna be kind of folding this and squeezing it out a little. And I have learned if I put my hand upside down when I'm squeezing that the water does not trickle down my arm into my armpit. So there's a little tip for you guys. If I do it this way, see how my arm is at an angle. It was always making the, the water kind of go down. You know, it's gonna follow, it's gonna follow that slope. So I'm just squeezing it out. Some people like to use like a salad spinner or something to extract the water. Um, but I, I don't know, it's just another, just another piece of equipment. So I just skipped that part. Um You can just squeeze it out though, see how it's not really dripping, but it is wet, it's not sopping wet, but it's, you know, thoroughly damp. Ok. So then you can lay that out on your plastic wrap and I like to kind of s like, I don't know what, what would you even call this? I was gonna say squiggling it, but I'm using my fingers to kind of make little waves in it and bring it a little closer together. Then I can spread this out a little what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get the most surface area showing here. So that way I can kind of see that my speckles and spots are getting most of the yarn and you'll find that you really need to do this in two sessions, one on this side and then you have to flip your yarn and do the other side. That might seem weird. I didn't really believe I was gonna have to do it like that. I thought I would just be able to get it to go through the backside, but it really, it leaves a lot of undyed strands on the back. So if you kind of wiggle this yarn up a little bit, then you're not gonna have any pooling that happens. Like even if you happen to be um, crocheting it up into the certain circumstance that's gonna, or certain circumference where it's going to make the, the dots land on top of each other. Um, if you kind of squiggle things up that lessens your chance of any pooling happening. So that's why I like to do that. OK. So I'm gonna start with this little brush here and I'm just getting it wet just a little bit damp, then I'm gonna dab it into my dye and you can see I just picked up a bunch of dye on there and then I'm just making some dots just like this. It's just a really fun like painterly activity. To do. I like to make and I like to make, I like bright colors. So um I didn't mix any of these colors up. I'm just using them straight. They're gonna be really nice, bright Kool Aid kind of colors. But if that's not you, if you really like muted colors, if you like your colors to have a little more, you know, nuance and depth to them, you can absolutely mix your colors up and make your own custom colors out of Kool Aid. I have done that before. It's really fun. Um And just if you're, if you need a little help with color mixing like, um you can look at different like painting tutorials and which colors to mix together. But if you're trying to make a brighter color a little less bright, then you can mix the compliment so that the or you can mix the color that's opposite the color wheel. So for example, if you've got red and you want to tone it down, you can mix it with the green. If you have orange, you can add a teeny, little bit of purple and if you have or or sorry, a teeny bit of blue, if you've got purple, you can add a teeny bit of yellow to it, to just kind of muddy it up a little bit. It's just um a way to kinda tone down the, the Wild Kool Aid colors. If you're not really into these kind of colors to me, this just looks like summertime, so I didn't mind, um, having bright colors. All right. So I did the blue and I'm gonna move on to the green and you can do as much or as little as you like. Um, if you do, if you're putting colors together, like, um, orange and green or red and green, if you're putting them too close to each other, depending on the ya, uh, on the yarn and, and, uh, how much water you have. They could kind of bleed together and make sort of a muddy color. If you're putting those colors that are opposite the color wheel next to each other, they might, the dye might kind of blend together. So that's something to think about too. We'll add a couple more and this is one of those things. You just sort of have to try it out and see what you like. Um, as far as how much speckling to do. I am going to show you with a fork. Now, get those wet and I'm gonna do some kind of longer. Let's see. Here we go. Oops, that got a little chunky. We'll get rid of those little chunks. I might have to add a little water to that. Some of them do not want to, some of them kind of get a little bit chunky just depending on the color. It happens more with some than others. And you can also make a little bit of a paste like this. I'm kind of making like a, I don't know, it's pretty thick, like, almost like, it's not quite as thick as ketchup, but you can make a little paste. So this was sticking a little better to my, um, basting brush and not quite as well to my fork, but just depending on the consistency you have here, it's, you can, you know, certainly use the fork. This is definitely working to get these little little dots of color. And one thing you want to look for is the areas that you tied will naturally just have less color color underneath them. If you're concerned about that, you can kind of move them around a little bit, you know, just to make sure you get something in there. So there isn't just a big um white expanse. All right. And now I'm going to use my little chopped up basting brush here for this last color. This is the pina pineapple color. Oops, here we go. I'm just checking in to see what oh, what questions people had. Um And Anne is asking if the Kool aid will wash out it, it will not wash out. Um I mean, there's always a chance of anything that's died washing out a little bit but the, the Kool Aid projects that I have done have not washed out like you will be shocked at how little dye there is in the water after, after I pull it out of the microwave and show you. I, I would not have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes, I might still find it very hard to believe, but it really does stay all right. This looks pretty good. And now I am gonna, I'll just add a couple more little bits here. I'm gonna flip it over so I can speckle the other side. See how little of the dye speckling went through. Almost none of it. So I'm gonna kind of rearrange things a little bit again. Oh, and I should have mentioned I'm not wearing gloves, but I would recommend if you don't want to stain your fingers, you can wear some, some gloves. Um, I don't mind getting a little Kool Aid on my fingers, but that's another thing that makes this a really fun kid project is that you don't have to worry so much. You know, if you were using a different kind of dye, you'd have to make sure that they're not, you know, sticking their fingers in their mouths or other things. Um, while you're not looking, but with Kool Aid, you don't have to be too worried about it and you can certainly mix colors together. Um, either on your project like you can put dots of your color. I guess I need a little more blue. Um You can OK. So just for example, what I just did there dip it in the green dip it in the blue. See what happens. You get this other pretty green, right? It's fun to just experiment and try things out and see what happens. So when I worked in the dye shop, most of what I was doing, I had very strict uh outcomes right that we had to meet, we had to dye to certain pan tones. It was um very, very specific. So I just find this kind of dying where you're just taking a very painterly approach to it and you're just trying stuff out experimenting. I just find it so fun, I think because partially, just because most of my other die experience was, it was fun, but it was just a different kind of fun. It was a little bit more science, a little bit more controlled. Um but it was so fun and you can do, you know, you can do larger areas where you do little sections of dots like that, you know, it's good to, it's good to just try stuff out. All right, I'm gonna get some of those other colors in here. Um Bobby is wondering if you could dye cotton rope. I would not, you will not be able to dye it with kool aid. That's a plant fiber, not an animal fiber. So it's not gonna take the same kind of dye. So there are different types of dyes made for different, you know, substances. Obviously, this is normally meant to dye water because it's kool aid but it works on animal fibers. Um So silk and wool is mainly what you can dye with kool aid. Um but cotton y you know, you could use something like rit dye. There are cotton dyes that are made just for cotton. Um and you could look into that but that those are not food safe dyes, which I mean, you don't have to eat your yarn and maybe you're interested in just, you know, actually getting some dye that's made specifically for, um, for dyeing yarn or fabric and that's fine too. But I just wanted this to be like, um, a good beginning dying kind of tutorial because it's, you know, if you're not really sure if you want, if you're like, hm, dying might be fun. I don't know. Do I want, you know, maybe you don't want to invest in that or maybe you're just not sure about safety stuff. Um, so this is a really good place to start. Oh, and Patty is asking what kind of yarn that I'm doing this with. This is a Merino wool and it is a super wash and I generally find that superwash wools, they tend to take dye just a little bit better than most other wools. But even if you have, you know, two kinds of yarn that are both say that they're Merino wool, one might take it a little bit differently than another. That's just the, you know, there's so many variables when it comes to dying, you know, the way the fiber is made, the animal that it came from, you know, any kind of chemical treatment process that it's had before it gets to you. There's so many, so many variables also, you know, the exact color you're using those, those make a difference too. Um So for something like this, when you're just making pretty things and it doesn't need to match an exact thing. Um, you know, it's good to just have sort of the idea that you're just gonna experiment and have some fun and try some stuff out. All right, this looks pretty good. All right, I'm gonna call that good. So, so the next step is to kind of straighten your yarn back out. You can kind of check it over and see if there's areas that don't have very many speckles if, if you moved it around and it seems like, oh, like here it's maybe a little lighter. Um, you know, you could add a little bit more in. But part of what I like about the speckling is the background, you know, just leaving some of it, like colored, it looks like fun fetti or, you know, like a party. So I don't wanna lose too much of that with this project here. I'm gonna check the other side o there's just a little, I'm gonna add just a little bit more over here and it can be fun to you know, if you're, if you only have two colors, like, say you have a yellow and you have a blue, it's, it's, you can definitely mix those powders together and make yourself a green. You can do it in the bowl first or you can do it, you know, as they're in different cups, you can just sort of dab a little there and then dab a little in another color. You can also just add your blue right next to your yellow and, um, and see if that blends together a little bit when we heat, set it. Ok. That looks good to me. All right. So we're gonna take this and we're gonna make a very long skinny burrito. So you'll want your piece to be kind of all laying on top of itself, kind of a, a thinner blob. OK? We had it really spread out before, but we want it to be a little thinner. So now I'm going to take each end and fold it in like this, um, like that. And I'm gonna take this end and place it on top and I like to put my fingers under here just to push the yarn in so that I can get the plastics, uh, wrap to seal to itself. So I'm kind of pushing that yarn in with my fingers and I'm laying that down like that. Ok. So it's all sealed in there and now we can wrap it up just kind of roll it like this. All right. And then at this point, we are going to make a cinnamon roll here. We're just gonna coil it up like this and then put it in a microwave safe container. I just have this old bowl that doesn't have a matching lid anymore. So I'm gonna use that and then I'm gonna put it in the microwave for two minutes. Oh, and you'll wanna set this so that if there's a seam in your, in your plastic wrap, which I can kind of see on that side. Yeah, I'm gonna flip it. You want the seam to be down, facing downwards. So that, that way the yarn kind of holds it together looks like mine twisted a little but I think it'll be ok. All right. So I'm gonna put it in my microwave and then I'm going to start, let's see, I'm putting it in for 22 minutes. Um, and I like to microwave my, you know, my yarn just heat, set it for two minutes in and then I let it cool off for two minutes, check it and then do it two minutes again. Usually four minutes is plenty for me that, but I've really only been using my microwave at home. So we'll see how this microwave, you know how much it heats, um, or how quickly it heats. So that might make a difference as well. Ok. And just check it in here looks like I'm all caught up. Ok. Oh Jane says I missed her comment. It says use a salt shaker to Sprinkle on the powder. Then you can really get speckles. Yes, I actually brought that to remind me to mention that I've got this little old salt shaker and I have tape over it so that the dye powder won't come out. But I mixed together a couple of different colors in there. Um, colors that are close to each other on the color wheel. I think I put a yellow and an orange, no yellow and a pink because then I thought it would make a really pretty peach color. Um And my daughter used this technique of sprinkling it on to create this yarn. So it's less speck for this. It was less speck on here and a little bit more almost reish. Um But of that is the yarn itself, the yarn that I'm dying here, it just tends to, um the Kool aid tends to activate a little bit quicker on that yarn for some reason. And I don't know, it could be that it's, this is a one ply and so the, the yarn and the wetness kind of was able to kind of wick along a little bit better. Um So that might be a little bit of it but or she was sprinkling it on a little bit more liberally or lower. If you Sprinkle your dye, you can just, you can even just use your fingers to take a little bit of dye and Sprinkle it like this. Like you're just putting a pinch of salt on something. If you, the higher up you Sprinkle, the more spread out your, your each individual little dots are going to be. So, um, it'll look more like a finer speckling if you Sprinkle from up higher. Whereas if you Sprinkle down lower, there will probably be bigger spots or bigger splotches. Um, because you, all of the dye is going a shorter distance. So it doesn't have a chance to kind of like for the air to sort of move it away from the other particles if you will. Um If this is something you might want to experiment outside like on a not windy day because if you're sprinkling pretty high up, you don't know where that like that Kool Aid could be going everywhere. Um So that's something to think about in your kitchen space. Uh You'll wanna, I taped paper down here just so that I wouldn't be making a mess on this nice table. You could, if you have a plastic um like a clear vinyl covering, you're probably OK with that for it to wipe off. But just think about if you've ever made Kool Aid before and accidentally stain the countertop or stained, you know, something else, it is possible to stain things with the Kool Aid. So just watch out for that and you're gonna wanna, you know, put some paper down or, uh, more plastic that, you know, like a plastic table cloth that you don't care if it gets stained. Um, another thing to think about if you have lots of powder that if you're sprinkling from higher up, um, if you spray down, if you do like a fine mist of water around your project, then if it lands there, you'll see where the dye has landed. So there isn't just gonna be dry dye particles on your table that you might get on to you later or onto other things. Um When I worked in the dye shop, that's one of the techniques that we would use. We would kind of missed, we would put down a bunch of old towels and we would miss the towels with a little bit of water. So that way you could see when the dye particles, the dry dark dye particles hit the the damp um uh towels, you could see where the dye was. So that way, you know, and it would actually stick there instead of just being a dye particle that would get kicked up and float away somewhere else because sometimes, you know, there were certain colors we would be using this. This wasn't kool aid. This is a different kind of dye. Oh It's just reminding me to open it. Um You know, there were certain particles that like to float around in the air. OK. So what you're looking for here, let's see. If there's enough water in here for us to see. But if you press down on this with a spoon or, you know, the back of your, the back of your, um, baster or something. Oops, I just got Kool Aid on my hand. Um, you should be able to squish it and see a little bit of the water in the bottom. I don't know if you guys can see this but you can kind of see it bubbling up just a little bit down in there and you can see if the water is clear. It looks like there's still a little bit of color in the water. There isn't very much water because it was only just damp. Um, so it's not gonna be like a big lake of it, but we just, I see it's a little yellow over here, so I'm gonna put it back in for two minutes. Um, we need to let it rest. I think it's been out for at least a minute since it, since it stopped microwaving. So I'm gonna leave it out just for another 30 seconds or so before I put it in. Um, again because you wanna microwave it in two minute increments and you do, you wanna make sure that you're letting it cool down for at least two minutes in between because you don't want it to get too hot. Um, but normally for my microwaves that I've used, like I said, it just takes two sessions, you know, a total of four minutes for it to set. All right, I'm gonna put it back in here. Yeah, I'm gonna put it back in here and do it for another two minutes. There's another two minutes. OK? And while that's microwaving, I'm gonna talk a little bit about these other techniques that you could try. So like I mentioned before, um you know, not everybody likes the Kool Aid colors or not everybody wants to wear those Kool Aid colors. I love them myself. But if you're looking for something that doesn't scream Kool Aid or something that's a little more muted, you can certainly mix your colors together. I just wanted to show you this skein that I dyed. This is with Kool Aid. Once again, it was a white skein to begin with and I did a little bit of the strawberry lemonade. You can see little flecks of paint, but then I added, I mixed equal parts of grape together with the blue blue. What is this blue raspberry lemonade, blue raspberry lemonade and grape together um which made this sort of like a little bit of a duller purply navy ish kind of color almost. And then this limey yellowy color that was mixed with um the pina pineapple which has a little bit of an orange tint to it. And I mixed that in with a little bit of this, the lemon lime green. And so it was about I would say three quarters ratio of the peanut pineapple to a quarter of the green and mix those together to make just like this kind of limey color. But I was looking for a color that wasn't too bright, that it was just a little bit. Um, I don't know, like a, like a honey ish tinge to a lime color. So I really, I was excited about using the peanut pineapple because it has a little bit of an orange tinge to it. And when you mix the orange and the green together, it muddies it up just a little bit and that's what I was looking for. So I was just kind of um experimenting with a little color and you can see how it turned out. So and on, on this, I used more like larger blobs of color and a little bit of a, you know, the sort of stroking, you know, using the basting brush, but I've kind of painted on it a little bit more. I still was using the same techniques where it was mostly dry and I would get my brush wet, dip it in there and then just kind of add that color that having it not be a, a wet thing that you pour on, gives you a little more control over where it goes. However, um it is fun to add a little bit of extra water. At the end of when we were working on this project, I decided I wanted to have a little bit more bold color and I wanted to just pour some color on. So I took our leftovers, added a small amount of water to it. So it was still very p minted, mixed it up and then you just sort of dripped it on. It wasn't enough, you know, it wasn't a lot of water in it. So it wasn't pooling on my plastic wrap at all. It just kind of soaked into the yarn and this is, um, you know, the kind of effect that it had, it had larger splashes of color in it. Um, it was just a fun way to get it, you know, very pigmented and, um, just larger sections of color. So that was a fun way to do it too. All right, let's check our yarn. I think it might be ok. So I'm just pushing down on this so that I can kind of see. Oh, yeah, that's clear. I can see the water moving around in there. Like when I, when I push down on it, it's squishing the yarn to the side and I can see little bubbles moving around and it looks pretty clear. So I think we're safe. I'm gonna let it sit here for just a couple more minutes. Um, and one thing about working with yarn and heating it up is especially, you know, when you're working with wool, you don't wanna felt your yarn. So felting happens. With agitation and heat. So you don't want to accidentally felt your yarn, you don't want to shock your yarn. So at this point, this is very hot. Um, and I'm going to let it cool off. I'm just gonna flip it out onto this lid here. Um I'm gonna let it cool off for a little bit before I start to unwrap it. You don't want it to cool off too quickly because what happens then is it shocks your yarn and it can start to felt and even if it's not, even if the strands aren't felting to each other, it can get a rougher texture because it's sort of like starting to felt and I don't know if it's, the scales are kind of lifting up. I'm not exactly sure, but it kind of has this rougher feel to it and you don't want to do that to your yarn. So it's so hard to wait to look at it. This is like the hardest part is when you're like, oh, it's set. I just want to look at it, rinse it out and look at it. Um, but you kind of have to just let it sit there for a little bit while it, while it cools off slowly. I'm gonna just kind of uncoil this a little bit here so that it can cool off a little bit better. Um, and then in a little bit, we will unwrap that. But you can see if you look in here like some of the colors got a little bit more bright. Actually, once we steamed it because that set it into the, set it into the um the fibers. Let's see. Got a cou a couple questions. Oh OK. Wacky. S as I ask you, remind me, what do you soak the wool in? All? I soaked the wool in was just water. Just tap water, just room temperature, tap water. Um If you are using, I talked about this a little bit earlier. If you are using something like a um uh like the Wilton food dyes or some other kind of some other kind of food dyes like you can use. Um uh Somebody mentioned it earlier. I can't remember just another like you can use, sometimes you can use like little dyed candies, somebody dyed something with something earlier and mentioned it anyway. Um But if you're using something that is not kool aid, the kool aid has a citric acid in it. So that counts as the acid. So that's gonna help it stick to the yarn or adhere into your yarn uh into the wool strands. So you're gonna need something to do that. So you can use another acid which is vinegar. Most people have vinegar at their house, you can just put like 2 to 3 tablespoons into, into the, into your bowl and let it soak in that just kind of mix it up in the water ahead of time, put your yarn in there and then let it soak in the, in the water with the vinegar. But if you're just using the Kool Aid, you don't even need that. You just soak it in water. It's just, that's it. It's not anything, there's nothing special in there, it's just water. Um And what is the Kool Aid mix with is the question? I'm not sure I understand your question. I, I'm wondering if you're asking if I mix the Kool Aid with something else. Um It's just the Kool Aid. It's just the powdered Kool Aid in in. You can see the powder here and then there's a little bit of water here. So I was just dabbing my um basting brush or my fork or whatever into I have a little cup of water here just putting it into the water and then dabbing it into the Kool Aid to pick up those particles. So um yeah, and you don't even need, you don't need to do it this way like I was saying before. So you can make your little dots like that. Um What I was saying before is you can also just Sprinkle the dye on. You don't have to use a basting brush. You don't have to use a fork, but I'm just using a little tiny bit of water just to wet my brush so that I can pick up those particles and transfer them to, to my yarn. Oh ok. You're saying it looked like some type of powder in the bowls. Yeah. So it does look, it is just the Kool Aid here. I know it probably looks like I mixed it with something else. The whiter powder here, that's just the Kool Aid before it gets wet. So I'm guessing there's a, you know, there's other things in there like citric acid. I don't know what else is in there with the dye. But um yeah, it's just kool Aid straight out of the packet. I have actually mixed um I have mixed, I've experimented a little bit with mixing Kool Aid with citric acid because I knew that the acid would, you know, maybe help it bond a little quicker to the, to the yarn. I wasn't really sure if that would work or not, but I did mix Kool Aid in with citric acid and actually I did that in my, my salt shaker here. Um because I wanted to find a way to mix the dye particles with something else to help them spread out a little bit more so that it looked like more individual speckles because I thought if it came out of here too quickly, it would be too much dye in one spot. And I wanted to mix it with something else to kind of disperse it a little bit more. It worked a little bit. I wouldn't say that it really made that big of a difference, but sometimes people will put citric acid in with their, their water as you know, the acid to die with. But I would just recommend using vinegar. Most people have vinegar. Not everybody has citric acid at their house. I'm not really sure about the acidity of those two things compared to each other. I'm just used to using vinegar just like a couple of tablespoons of vinegar in the water. Um But yeah, OK. So this, it's still really warm, but I'm going to take at least take it out of the plastic wrap so that you guys can see what it looks like. It'll, it'll hopefully cool off a little quicker and then I can put it in the water and show you, um, show you what it looks like when we rinse it. There we go. So normally I let this cool off for quite a long time, like an hour or so. Um, or even more like I'll be dying something and I'll just be dying another piece and, you know, distracting myself with something else and leave it for a couple of hours. But here this is still pretty hot. I'm gonna try and spread it out a little bit to see if I can get it to cool off before I put it in the water. It's cooling off a little quicker now, but it's still pretty hot. Here's my little plate of colored spaghetti really looks a lot like spaghetti when it's in that bowl. I'm gonna move these out of the way here. Um Let's see. Uh I've got to catch up on all my little notes here. Ok. Oh, someone's saying that they're fascinated. I wonder how speckled was done without turning into a hot mess. Yes, it helps when the dye particles are dry and the, and the yarn is just damp because that way it's not running all over and mixing in with the other colors. Yeah, that's kind of like key. Um And let's see. And this is for natural fibers only. Correct. Yes. So just um wool. I, I haven't tested it on silk but I think that it would also work on silk but definitely wool. Um It's not gonna work on acrylics or cottons or, you know. Yeah, I, I would, you might be able to get a little bit of staining that might happen, but it's not gonna be, you're not gonna be happy with it and then it's not gonna be very color fast. It's, it's not gonna work out. Uh Let's see. Where have you been bookkeeper? Yes, I'm here. We have lots and lots of live tutorials. Um If you wanna check out other things on the Creative Crochet corner website, I've been doing lots of live tutorials and I love it when people make suggestions on things, you know, like things they wanna learn or techniques to try out. So definitely if you guys have ideas or if there are other kinds of Kool aid dying things you wanna know about, you know, just leave those comments so that I can see them. I do look at the comments um and that'll help me when I'm planning future events. I I love to try out different things. I'm very experimental Crocheter. Um Yeah, and so I, I like going with your suggestions. OK. And Mary's wondering what happens when the yarn needs, needs to be washed, you can just wash it. It does not come out. I know that I know that I'm sounding like a little bit of a broken record here. Um But it really works so much better than you would imagine. You have to try it to see it with your own eyes, but I'm gonna show you, I'm just gonna take this out. This is just regular water in here. This is my next skein that was soaking in there and I'm gonna put it. I think it's almost cool enough that I can put it in there. I probably should have left it for a little bit longer. But I really want to show you guys how little dye will come out in the water before our live is up here. There we go. I'm so right now I'm using the they yarn to help me pick this up. Oh, it's still pretty hot. I don't think I should put it in the water quite yet. I think we need a few more minutes of it. Cooling off. Although I think that it, you know, it'll felt less, it'll be less of a problem for this yarn because it is a super wash wool. But I still think it's not worth messing with the texture of the wool. Um, it's just so much better to just let it cool off to room temperature and then put in the water. If this water was a little warmer, then I'd be less stressed out about putting it in here. But this is just a room temperature water. So I don't really want to do it quite yet. Um OK. Uh Golden age says, thank you. I I have been wondering, I totally understand how kool aid can work but won't, it won't work on cotton. Why would that be if you know, yes, it does not work on cotton. Um It just works on animal fibers. There are different types of dye that are made for different fibers. So it just has to do with, I mean, the science of what makes that fiber like how to get the dye particles to go inside of it. It's just, you know, they're made up of different things, you know, animal hair is up of something different than plant fiber is. So cotton is a plant fiber and wools, animal fiber. So you just need to have different types of dyes for those different things. Now there is some overlap with certain things like rit dye supposedly dyes, you know, a bunch of different kinds of fibers but I don't know there are coming from a dying background. We just use certain dyes for certain fabrics or fibers or whatever it was that we were dying. Um because we knew that that would show up the best on that particular thing. Um Yeah, it's just not gonna bond with the cotton. It's not gonna go into the fiber and stay there like it would for wool. OK? This is feeling a little bit better. I mean, a little bit less hot, still warm and it makes me a little nervous to put it in there, but I we're running out of time so I'm just gonna, it's just warm, it's warm to the touch. Um, but I'm gonna put it in there. OK? So you'll see when I put this in the water and I'll pull it back out so then you can see what the dye water looks like. But here it is mushing it around a little, you don't wanna agitate it. You don't wanna um, you know, you, you certainly do not wanna accidentally felt that after all your, your hard work, but I'll pull it out and you guys can hopefully see, look at that dye water. It is clear. OK? There's not even any color bleeding that's happening in the yarn itself. It's just staying those little speckles and y you might be thinking, well, those are tiny, little speckles. Brenda. I mean, come on what if we use larger amounts of water? You just have to trust me that like when I dyed this, this has a lot more dye in it. And even when I've dyed like a solid red skein, you can pull it out and you see almost no coloration at all in the water. It is shocking and, and just in case you guys are interested, um I did make a tiktok for craft Sea about dying yarn using Kool Aid and just doing it in jars in the sun and not even using a microwave. So what I did was I used um a bunch of different jar jars and then I dyed them in kind of rainbow colors. You just take the yarn, put it into the jar that already has the Kool aid in it, which by the way, I should mention no sugar. You don't want the the kind of kool aid that comes premixed with the sugar because you do not want to make a sticky globby mess. Just only the kool aid packet in the water in the jar, put the yarn in and then just let it sit there for a few hours and it will soak up the the dye and it seems very surprising that it would stay there. But I rinsed it and rinsed it and the water is always clear when I wash it. So I don't know, it's, it's very surprising if I didn't do it myself. I would not have believed it. So you guys, I just highly encourage you if you guys are interested in learning how to do this. Definitely check it out, try it out. It's really fun. Um See, look at how clear this water is. There's no color in there and here's all the color in my yard. It's very speck and it looks really pretty like a fun fetti cake. I know it looks like a mess right now, but it will look very similar to this um with a little bit less of the yellow because I sprinkled some extra yellow in there, but it'll look very similar to this when it's dry. So just to give you an idea. All right, I think um ok, so Patty is saying you can use alum and baking soda to dye cotton. It's called a Morten. So the Morton is what makes your dye adhere to the fiber and that should help. But I even if you're using that, I am not sure that that's gonna work with Kool aid. You could, you can try it. Um But my experience was that I just would rather use a cotton dye because it just dyes so much better um than trying to. Well, but there, you know, there is the upside of being able to use a kitchen safe thing in your house. So there is that to think, think about too. You can do a little experimenting. But for cotton things, if you really wanna dye at a saturated color, especially if you wanted to speckle something or something like that. I would definitely recommend getting actual cotton dyes. All right. Ok. Well, I'm so glad that you guys were here. I really love dying yarn. I hope that you guys try it out. I hope that you guys love it too. Um This is just a really great jumping off point and you can do all kinds of cool stuff with Kool Aid, mixing, painting, dying, you know, hombre yarns, all kinds of cool stuff. Um So definitely don't be afraid to experiment. Thank you guys so much for joining me. I really appreciate you guys being here. Bye.