Thursday, January 24, 2008
Mug Up & The Science Experiment
Posted in Pictures
Yesterday was our weekly get together with our homeschool group, otherwise known as "Mug Up". Our hostess this week was Lori, a fellow knitter - we had decided a few weeks ago that we would try our hand at dying some wool with Kool-Aid. Neither one of us had done this (at least I don't think she has ever done it), so it was agreed that we would do this at her house. I had heard that you can tell when the dying process is done because the water turns clear, needless to say, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around that so I wanted to see for myself. Here are the pictures of our wool dying experiment: This is the wool I was using, a lovely cream color .... but not the color I wanted for my hat. This is the wool that Lori chose to dye. Here we are soaking the wool before it gets put in the Slowcooker. The Kool-Aid was mixed up with the water and the vinegar (I used 4 packages of Lime Kool-Aid that has no sweetener of any kind in it - you need 1 pack for each ounce of wool you are dying. 4 packages = 4oz. of wool) and then we (I should say, Lori, because I was taking the pictures) put the wool in the crock of the Slowcooker. All of the wool has been 'smooshed' under the Kool-Aid water. The crock has been inserted into the base, the lid has been put on and the Slowcooker has been set to 'High'. The instructions said that it would take about 3 hours to 'cook' it, but .... after an hour and a half we discovered that it was done. Notice that the color of the water around the edges is clear - if you check out the above pictures you will notice that it is green. After letting it cool (enough so that the wool could be handled without burning the hands), Lori took the wool out and squeezed the excess water out - which was clear, how cool is that. Here, Lori is rolling the wool up in a towel to get more moisture out of it. In this picture, Lori is hanging both her purple and my green wool up so that they could dry. Don't they both look amazing - we followed the exact same steps for Lori's.I have discovered that this could turn out to be a very addictive hobby - the colors that you can dye the wool is limited only by your imagination (and the Kool-Aid that is available in your town, lol). Thanks so much, Lori, for letting us do this at your house - it was a wonderful experience and doing it together took a lot of the 'scariness' out of it, lol.
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Thursday, January 24, 2008 - Untitled Comment
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Posted by Thursday, January 24, 2008 - Kool Aid
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