F is For.... Fruity Fun!

This week is F, and as An Accidental Knitter has decided to take a short break from blogging, I have offered to host the ABC meme, so please fill in the Mr Linky below if you want to participate!

So, my F for today is Fruity Fun... Ok, it's a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to talk about my Saturday morning adventure in dyeing yarn with Kool Aid. It's fruity, and I had a lot of fun ;)

I've loved seeing other blogs with people dyeing their own yarn and I love playing with colour, so I thought it was about time I had a go. I ordered some Kool Aid sachets (is anyone else disturbed by the fact that this stuff is so colourful and acidic that you can use it as a dye - it's supposed to be a beverage!) and some undyed yarn and got playing:

It's 50% merino, 50% tencel, from ebay. I know that non-animal fibres aren't good to dye, so I wasn't sure quite how it would go, but it's a lovely silky feeling yarn so I figured I should give it a go anyway! I was planning to take pictures during the process, but I made so very much mess that I couldn't bring myself to share *laughs*

So, here it is, my first hand-dyed yarn, still in loop form...

I took a couple of close up shots, showing the different sections.

Orange and Strawberry:

Grape and Blue Lemonade:

Mixing all of the above, in less concentration, for a pastely section:

And here it is properly, as an actual skein *grins* I love how the blue and orange ended up next to each other at the end, it looks like a real person made it (ok, I know I'm a real person, but you know what I mean!)

It was so much fun, I felt like a kid doing "experiments" in the kitchen ;)

I had also ordered Lemon/Lime, which didn't fit in the colour scheme of the skein I was doing, so I overdyed a partial ball of Debbie Bliss Como that I had.

As you can see, the light green of the original really look up the colour, so I plan to make something stripy with the two now.

My house smelled so fantastically fruity after all of this, and I can't stop sniffing the yarn either. I want all of my yarn to smell this good ;)

So, that's me for this week, but check out the links below for other ABC posts...