Seagrass Kettle Dye

It's been a long time since I posted anything, and an even longer time since I did anything with my giant undyed wool stash... so I took some dyestuffs that I had around the house and kettle dyed a couple skeins.

Materials used:

• 2 skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (color: Natural)
• blue liquid food coloring
• 1 packet lemonade koolaid (actually it was a generic knockoff, but I threw out the package before thinking to write down what it was -- the important details are that it was sugarless and yellow)
• 1 bag black tea
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee mix
• 1/2 teaspoon (approximate) turmeric
• copper penny solution (made by soaking ~100 copper pennies in 1 quart vinegar + water solution for a long time, probably a year -- not really recommended to soak this long)

If you couldn't tell by the materials list, this was an improv job. I was shooting for something with deep blue and turquoise tones. The end result turned out a bit more green/yellow/brown overall and the blue was lighter than I wanted, but it's still pretty.

Thursday night: I loosely reskeined 2 store skeins of yarn and soaked them for 3 hours in the copper penny solution. Then I poured the copper solution back into a container and let the yarn dry on some trays. 

Friday morning: In my dye pot (which is never ever used for food!), I wet the yarn a little bit with the copper solution and some fresh vinegar + water mixture. Using 2 skeins of yarn = 1 full pound = very full pot! I started with blue food coloring, squirting a bunch in one area of the pot. In retrospect, I might have needed more blue to get a more saturated color, but it looked super almost scary blue at the time. I also dissolved the koolaid knockoff in about 2 pints of water and poured that on the other side of the pot and made 1 pint of tea and poured it roughly in the middle. Then I poured more water + vinegar in the pot until the wool was covered, and turned on the heat.

About 30 minutes in, I was worried the yellow and light brown were getting overrun by blue, so I dissolved some turmeric in hot water and made some instant coffee and poured those roughly over the yellow and brown areas. As a result, I'm not sure if the almost-fluorescent yellow spots in the final product are from the koolaid or the turmeric... but if I had to guess I'd say the former.

After another 30 minutes (1 hour total), I turned off the heat because I was worried the yarn was starting to felt. I couldn't stop poking at the yarn to try to see what the underside looked like (bad of me!) so it was agitated more than necessary. I left it to cool for several hours on the stove..... then poured out the water.... then lifted the yarn onto trays to cool for another hour or so.

Finally I rinsed the yarn, washed with soap, and laid both skeins out on my drying rack.

Theoretically these should have dried overnight, but I think the skeins were too bulky since there was so much yarn in each one and they were still super damp in the morning. I rewrapped them on Saturday morning and let them dry all day Saturday. And then I rotated the drying racks 180 degrees so the other side was closer to the window and let them dry all day Sunday, just to be safe. Here they are drying this afternoon (Sunday):

skein 1 / side 1

skein 1 / side 2

skein 2 / side 1

skein 2 / side 2

I'll leave them on the drying racks all day tomorrow (Monday), because I have to go to work and won't have time to take them down until Monday evening. Edit: added below pic of finished skeins on Monday night <3

skein 1 (left) and skein 2 (right)