HEY Kool Aid!!

Once upon a time (quite awhile back), I ordered a skein of Great Adirondack Nassau yarn in the Tourlamine colorway from an online yarn store. (No doubt I had a pattern in mind for this "at the time" but I'm so flighty when it comes to projects I have No idea what it was now -uhh... like I knew a WEEK after this came! I crack myself up ). Anyway, I'm pretty sure this isn't the colorway I ordered and instead of bothering to return it I just kept it. This is what arrived:

I was expecting the colorway that is in the link above (whom I DID NOT buy this thru but probably should have if they were selling it way back when). I received this lime green, pinkish, orangey neon thing which would have been okay if that was what I had ordered. But it wasn't. This ball has been sitting in my stash for over a year at least so I decided, "why not change the color!"

Nassau is 50% cotton/50% silk so this is "iffy" in dye land with kool aid (works best on animal fibers = wool) but I've been wanting to try it so bad I figured what the heck?. After reading up on the What a Kool Way to Dye board on Ravelry and asking if this would work - I soaked it for about 30 minutes in luke warm/cool water, mixed my kool aid and a bit of water in a cup, then put the yarn & mixture in a microwave safe dish and ran it thru for 2 minutes at a time for a total of 8 minutes. In between I would let it set a bit so I wouldn't cook my yarn. When the water gets clear, the dye has been absorbed in. Mine seemed to be okay for the most part even though it looked like this in between trips to the microwave:

Looks a little like icky I'd say. But it's part of the process. Then I just let it sit and cool.

I gave it a few rinses in cool water to try to get some of the excess dye out. Red is a hard color to stop from bleeding no matter what kind of dye you use. This is it in a white bowl, so not too bad considering how dark it was to start out with. This is what I got once it dried. It's still not anywhere near as dark as I had hoped for but the neon greenish spots turned "gold" which works okay for me. I may still give it one more go, I'm not sure if I used enough KA and need to ask on the board. I used 5 packages: 2 Cherry, 2 Black Cherry and 1 pink lemonade (just for the fun of it). I don't have a scale and I think it's one packet per ounce. I think I may use all cherry next time too.

This being a cotton/silk blend, it's not going to work as well as it would with wool, but I like the variations that still exist in it. It's certainly no worse off than it was when I started out! And I have to say, this is some SOFT yarn, another one that I want to just have by me to "pet". I may order that Tourlamine on ebay after all (once my yarn diet is over). If you haven't kool aid dyed yet, you're missing out. It's fast, fun and I can't wait to try it again.