Dip dyeing yarn with Grape Crush

So I've been binge watching videos from Rebecca at ChemKnits.  She's amazing by the way. And since I've been doing a lot of knitting lately, I went yesterday looking for dye dedicated equipment so I can try to start dyeing my own.  I have a friend who asked, a long while ago, if I could make her a pair of fingerless mitts that are blue and purple. I have been looking ever since for a nice purple/blue variegated combination and I realized that NO ONE puts just these two colors together anymore, so I've been continuing to search and also contemplating dyeing my own, so I can get what I really want.  

I entered 'dyeing yarn with Kool Aid' into the search box on  YouTube.  There are a whole boat load of videos about this.  So I watched a bunch to see how the methods varied between dyers.  Along about 10th or 12th in the series was a video from ChemKnits for handpainting yarn with Kool Aid. And about 5 seconds into the video I was hooked.  She was painting the yarn with her son, Lucas, who is totally adorable.  

I started bingewatching all her videos and she uses a lot of interesting materials to dye her yarn. :)  It's amazing to watch.  I love that she gets soooooo excited about the colors and techniques. She uses a wide variety of easily accessible kitchen stuff to dye her yarn. (Seriously, check out her stuff and see what she does with  Wilton's gel food color!)

So this inspired me.  When I went on my shopping spree yesterday, I got a 2 liter of Grape Crush (She used Orange Fanta in one of her videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo3OrjVfmnA&t=485s), so I could see what the purple would come out looking like.

I soaked my yarn (50% superwash merino, 25% rayon from Bamboo and 25% nylon) in the water for an hour.  I poured the whole 2 liters of the Crush into the stock pot I bought and heated it.  I tried the dip dyeing, so I could try to get a gradient look to the yarn.  It didn't take long to get the color soaked into the yarn.

This is what the pot looked like when I was done with my yarn. I know I kicked myself for not getting a before picture.  But it was very purple.  You couldn't see anything but the carbonation bubbles and the grape pop.

This is the yarn soaking after I stopped the dyeing process.

This is the yarn yesterday after I was done rinsing the yarn.

And this is what it looks like this morning.  It's WAYYYY lighter than I thought it would be and it's not even purple.  It's a mauvey/magenta color  It's still very pretty, but not the purple I was going for.

Today, we're going to have a household dyeing experiment.  I'm going to be making Bri more socks, but she requested more with different colors (because teenagers don't like matching socks).  I asked if she would like it better if she made her own yarn, and she got very excited.  So to the store we went! :)  I'm not entirely sure what methods we're going to be empoying, but it will be a very fun adventure.  I'll post the results.

I enjoyed this experiment and I want to thank Rebecca from ChemKnits for the inspiration and all the instructions.  Check out her videos, they're incredible.

emptiness

I have never thought I was all that interesting until I started getting a lot of friends on Facebook.. who would have ever thought I could entertain people? Go figure.

My life was pretty boring until about March of 2009.. that is when I accepted an invite to go to a bar called High Jacks - which is real close to Cleveland Hopkins airport and which Neill made a comment about that being a bad name for something so close to any airport. But anyway, this is the night that I hung out with Linda, Jamie, Doreen, Jon, Angie and Jack. Boy what a night and boy what a year and a half it's been.

I have since added Tina, Lisa, John, and Becca into my life and it's been a great one! I have wonderful friends who have become my family, since most of mine are no longer with us in a physical sense. I have added 18 children to my family and 2 grandchildren, one of which was the first newborn I ever held.. yeppers.. my Kaelyn has my heart from now til the end of time. My beloved little girl will be 1 on Thursday and because I have school, I will not get to spend time with her on her birthday, which makes me sad, but we shall celebrate on Wednesday and I will probably make a stop over there on Thursday to give her a birthday kiss.. cuz those only count if they are received on your birthday, otherwise, they are just love kisses. :)

Okay, so I babble even more when typing than I do when I talk - sounds scary, right? haha I do love hanging out at the Parma Cafe with a bunch of people that I went to school with. Yep, another scary idea. Never had the nerve or whatever to talk to most of these people when we were in school. I never had many friends in school, not sure if it was me being too weird for people to deal with or too bitchy. *shrug* whatever.. that's the past and I feel like such a different person.

Being a first blog (Woo hoo - lots of firsts on this glorious day), a little history might be in order. At 19, I lost my mom, went through a very depressed but too lazy to kill myself stage, so I was the wild child that did everything but drugs (never really had the desire to try those). Started logging in to the computer around age 20 or 21 and met tons and TONS of people online, but looking back, I think I seemed more like a stalker than someone who just wanted to talk to ppl (hmm.. sounds like high school I think). Started on Cleveland Freenet and IRC, then went to LambdaMOO and all the other MOOs that I was on that I can't remember the names of. In 2001, my dad got married to Peg and moved to Colorado. Then kind of stumbled around a little. Met Neill in 1996. In 2005, lost my grandmother and my brother, the only really close family I had left in the area. My step-sister flew in from Colorado for my brother's funeral, and has since had the 'step' dropped from her title. :) She's awesome and I love her and my niece and two nephews very much. January 27, 2006 I signed the papers to get my house. January 28, 2006 I realized how much I hated my house, yessiree I hadn't even moved all my crap in and already hated it.. c'est la vie I suppose.

2009 brought about the night at High Jack's and the rest has been the best time of my life. There have been ups and downs, but without those, I wouldn't have the greatest people in my life now. I am grateful every day for them and I truly love them and their families with all my heart (I just think Christmas is really WAY gonna suck this year if I try to get something for EVERYone!!! EEP! Where's that damned winning lottery ticket already?!?!)

August 12, 2010 - started on my Associate's degree at Indiana Wesleyan University, Independence, Ohio campus. It's been quite a rough first few weeks of that, but I'm glad I did it. And I did it because of Mike. Thanks, Mike! Love you too! :)

That brings us pretty current, so from here, it will be random thoughts and meaningful quotes that I see or hear. (I already have a list of quotes from books that I want to post SOMEwhere.. kinda tired of writing them all down and losing the papers. :)

Until next time, I will be thinking and praying that a certain someone can understand what I'm trying to say and not break my heart entirely. *smoochies*