I took my kool-aid on the road to my “Fiber Fun!” class at Selma’s elementary school (remind me to tell you about last week when Rebecca came with her wheel and taught us all how to spin yarn…)

At any rate–this one project has been more time-consuming than any other I’ve done for a class–kid or adult… It’s a good thing I’m enjoying it. Before the class–I unwound the big Lion Fisherman’s Wool balls into skeins, washed them, packed all my supplies (kool-aid from 3 different grocery stores, plastic containers from the dollar store, etc.) and delivered them to the school.

A few things I learned from dyeing with the kids:

1) Twisting the yarn is a good way to get a nice variegated look. Twist it tightly, submerge in dye bath for a few minutes to get some nice dark spots, then untwist and allow the rest of the yarn to absorb color before micro-waving…

2) Kids will taste the unsweetened kool-aid powder now matter how emphatically you warned against it. (And if you warn them not to get it up their noses, they’ll try that too.)

3) I plan on making this yarn the stuff we use for project for the rest of the session. What might be a better idea next time would be to dye lots of mini balls and let the kids take them home, microwave them there, and just keep them. But either way–the kids had a great time ( and Selma said she didn’t notice that I ran out of things to do–they all thought hang-man was supposed to be part of the class!)

4) Maybe it’s because I rushed, but these skeins didn’t seem quite as color-fast. There was a tiny bit of bleeding, I hope that doesn’t mean there will be more…

5) Dyeing with the kids takes less than a full hour–next time I’ll need to bring a second project to fill up the remaining few minutes. (We played hang-man.) Of course, this didn’t mean the process was done. I spent the better part of the evening microwaving, washing, rinsing, and even redyeing a couple of skeins that didn’t get enough color. I still have to wind (and some of it tangled a bit) it all into balls.

I’ll have some pictures tomorrow probably, I’m too tired to upload them this evening, but I wanted to get these thoughts down while they were still fresh…

Dyeing all over again…