OK, so they don’t make those flavors anymore.  And Purplesaurus Rex was awesome.  Sorry, I digress.  Kim and I decided to celebrate President’s Day (and my long weekend!) by using Kool-Aid for nefarious wool-coloring purposes.  (And please ignore the hideous pics of me on her blog!)  Since I basically own 50% of the Kool-Aid stock in the modern world, I brought the Kool-Aid.  We then popped apart the hanks of KnitPicks Bare, and discovered that they are hanked up in an odd manner.  I assumed that the first one was tied up well enough without my help, and when I put it in the sink to soak, it turned into a nasty pile of spaghetti.  I thought we should re-skein the second, and I clipped the attached ties apart – and we proceeded to spend the next 3+ hours trying to untangle the pile.  It was a huge nightmare.  The 3rd and 4th hanks were left as-is, but retied with about 8 more ties, and we’ll worry about the mess later!  As Tricia was kind enough to mention, “That’s what you get when you buy cheap yarn.”  Yep.

We were smart enough to order the superwash (and it sucks up the color in seconds instead of minutes!), so as not to revisit the felting and subsequent toe-breaking debacle of October 2006.  I also brought the vinegar – and was smart enough this time to take the spaghetti sauce down from the shelf before pulling down the big vinegar bottle.  Notice I’m still not smart enough to avoid storing the spaghetti sauce on the top shelf.

When we finally got to the dyeing itself, we had a fabulous time.  Kim was a chemist in her former life, and if we could have used beakers and bunsen burners, she would have been even more in her element.  As it was, she immediately jumped to advanced level, declaring that she wanted to dye, cook, and overdye her first batch in order to obtain a better purple.  Then when it all came out, she wanted to overdye part yet again in some Tamarindo to tone it down.  What she ended up with was an awesome green/red/burgundy that I can’t wait to see knitted up.  We also had great help from Bugga (3.5) and Jammer (2).  Bugga was particularly enamored of the Kool-Aid (never before seen in her house), and wanted to smell all of the colors.  And wanted to make some yarn purple, “for me!”  She stirred and helped us make a huge mess, but at the end of the day, we had this to show for it.

Kim’s are the 2 on the left, mine are the 2 on the right.  I, of course, have already named mine – the pink, orange, and yellow is Tequila Sunrise, and the blue, green, and pink is Easter Egg.

In other knitting news, my Year of Knitting for Others is chugging along.  I finished up and delivered Sue’s socks (our renegade crocheter at Knit Night), and they were a hit.

I’m currently working on a pair of socks for my Grandma, recently home from the hospital, which are nearly finished, a pair for my friend Ann from the MINI club, and the Uptown Boots socks for me.  Oh, and a pair for Miss Bugga out of the remainder of Grandma’s yarn, since she was so patient yesterday, and since the first socks her mom is working on ended up a little smaller than planned, and will go to Little Sis.  Toddler socks should help me keep up with my 3 pairs per month pledge – if I finish hers and Grandma’s, that gives me my 3 February pairs.  Also included here is a picture of the socks I made last winter for Mark – it was finally cold enough for him to want to wear wool socks, so I snapped a pic while he was lying down.  Oh – and now he wants more!

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