Dye! Dye! Dye!

So the other week at one of the local thrift shops I found a lovely bulky pale lime green wool sleeveless sweater. That was made in Uruguay. And it begged me to save it from a life of tedious sleeveless sweater syndrome. So I did. I frogged it a few nights ago and ended up with roughly 255 useable yards of pale lime green bulky (ok, it's more of a thick & thin, ranging from worsted to super-bulky) single ply 100% wool. From Uruguay.

Pale lime green is *not* my color. I had considered overdyeing it something in an olive green and black, but well, Kool-Aid doesn't come in olive green or black (but it should). I happened to have grape, black cherry and strawberry (as well as a few others) in the cupboard though, so I decided to use them all mixed together.

Interestingly, when the yarn went into the Kool-Aid the pale lime green instantly disappeared, leaving behind very pale yellow yarn. And here I was worried that it'd come out mucky because of the pale lime green base (why yes, I am having fun emphasizing the color here). It did end up a mucky purple though, but that's probably due to the Kool-Aid to water to yarn ratio. So I left it in the pot overnight, thinking I'd run out and get more Kool-Aid the next day. But the next day I remembered the Wilton's that I have (two four-packs of colors, one in a Winnie the Pooh assortment - egad, it's almost 10 years old now - and one in a Powerpuff Girls assortment). I mixed varied amounts of reds and blues and pinks and other blues together in three different mason jars with water and white vinegar and attempted painting the yarn on saran wrap, but it just made a mess of muck. So I dumped the whole thing back into the pot and randomly dumped the diluted colors into the pot and well... the result is above. What started out as pale lime green is now a lovely mix of pinks (still not my color), reds, and deep blue-purples. I *love* the end result. And now need to find the perfect felted bowl pattern for this yarn.

Next dye project... merino roving (eep... I've heard merino is tricky to spin, and I've only done spinning once before but this is all I have at the moment). Chris is at the store searching for more Kool-Aid for me right now. :)