Fun with Kool-Aid

Last night I decided it was finally time to break out the Dye-Your-Own Knit Picks yarn and the packages of Kool-Aid I had in my pantry and make some of my own self-striping yarn. Unfortunately, I didn't think far enough ahead to plan correctly for this project, and I didn't have nearly enough Kool-Aid (just four measly packs). The result was what I chose to call a base for my real dyeing adventure. Here are some shots:

Yarny takes a bath!

Skein drying after preliminary dyeing session. The purple on the left was a result of mixing one package BlueRraspberry and one package Pink Lemonade. The green is one package Lemon-Lime and one package "Changin' Cherry," which allegedly starts out blue, changes to green, and tastes like cherry (I didn't test to see if the last point was true).

Mmmm, yarn soup! This is tonight's batch, with a much, much higher concentration of Kool-Aid. The green is exclusively Lemon-Lime (six packages of it); the blue, which for some reason came out cloudy, is composed of four packages Blue Raspberry and three Blue Berry. I picked up more blue than green because the green did a much better job in the preliminary dyeing round, besides which blue is my favorite color and I really wanted it to dominate this colorway.

This yarn is destined to be a pair of Broad Street Mittens -- appropriate, considering I used to live about five blocks from Broad Street when I was in grad school. I know that Jessica had some difficulty with hers, and I'm a tad bit nervous as my hands are also on the smallish side (well, they're skinny, with ridiculously long fingers). I'm hoping that this pattern is where my tendency to knit tightly will become very helpful.

All this week I've been working on the mate to J's sock, and it's coming along swimmingly (sockingly?). I'm well into the boring portion of stockinette in the foot, and I've switched back to two circs to get through this a bit faster (I used dpn's to turn the heel and do the gusset decreases).

In the meantime, I've been thinking about sweaters and which one I want to conquer next. I think I've settled on Bristow. Its pattern is tricky enough to look impressive to non-knitters and keep me entertained, but simple enough that I shouldn't have to take pages of notes and carry around a spiral notebook like I did with Blanche. The best part? This pattern actually calls for Knit Picks yarn! Even overestimating my needed yardage (which I now will always do, probably more so than necessary, after the Knitting Olympics Equipment Failure -- e.g., yarn shortage), I figure it'll cost me less than $50 for the yarn for this sweater. I still have to dig through my needle drawer to see if I have the called-for needles; if not, I will just have to get myself some Addis for this one. I have not purchased yarn yet (just calculated the cost, mind you!) because I've put myself on a modified yarn diet. J and I are going to DC next weekend, and I know I saw ads for at least two DC yarn stores in the spring Interweave Knits. You know I will make it my mission to find them in between taking silly touristy photos and visiting with friends. I know I just will not be able to leave without taking something home with me -- it would just be rude to travel all that way and leave pretty yarn behind!

Tonight's yarn soup is still cooling on the stove. I'll post pictures of the finished product once it's dry and been "baked" into a lovely yarn cake. Until then, I'll be enjoying an unexpected side benefit of dyeing my own yarn -- the yummy fruity smell of Kool-Aid in the morning!