dyeing yarn with kool-aid?

grape kool aide does not come out a nice lavender color. It comes out more gray. super nasty.

try making a little food coloring dye:

1 quart water, 1/4 cup vinegar (doesn't matter much whether it is cider or white), and enough food coloring to get the purple you wish. Remember you can always go back and over dye it if it isn't dark enough. That is much easier than taking it out.

Put your yarn in the bowl with the dye and put in the microwave for about 4 to 5 minutes on high. Let cool and rinse to see what you have. You may have to dry it to see the true color.

I don't know if the nylon will take the food coloring dye. Haven't ever tried it.

But I would do a small sample of the yarn and make notes as to how many drops of red and blue coloring you put into the dye bath on each trial run.

I have only dyed 100% wool yarns and rovings.

You can do this with kool aid or food dye, altohugh it might come out funny. The nylon part will not take up near as much of the color as the wool will, and superwash wool will not take it up as easily as other kinds of wool.

The color will be a function of two things: the color of the mix you put it in, and the absorption. You can get lavender by doing one of two things; dilute color, or leaving the yarn to soak for a small amount of time.

Try this out yourself with small test bits before dying the whole thing, and take careful notes about how much color and how long.

To get a lavendar color, you need to mix red and blue, but there should be ever so slightly more blue. Again, cut small bits of yarn, make lots of small dye baths to try, and WRITE IT ALL DOWN, so when you find one that works, you can do it on a larger scale.

Lavender is a nice name, but it is not very exact. You need to know what you mean by that.

There are some purple colours in KA -- mostly grape, but that isn't really lavender. You can't really dilute KA colours... it will just mean that some of the yarn will get colour and some won't. That's not what you want -- you want it to be a lighter shade. You need to mix some neutral colour to make the colour thinner. And in KA, I don't know of anything like that.

You can try a little very weak KA on a small sample, and see what happens. You can't remove the colour, so you need to be sure before getting started. See if you can find something like Purplesaurus... I think it is pale purple.

This site has great info on this.

http://www.knitty.com/issuefall02/FEATdyedwool.htm...

Just keep in mind that the Kool Aid will dye the wool portion of the yarn but not the nylon.