I came up with something fun to make for H's little friends, and he got to help! We made custom colored hats, using wool yarn dyed with Kool-Aid.
First I got some Fisherman's Wool from Lion Brand, and wound them into long skeins using these iron chairs. The loops ended up being about 9 feet, and I first made up a test hat and measured to see how much yarn I'd need for each. Then I remembered about pom-poms, so I wound those separately. See the little tiny skeins on the left side of the last picture? Those are for pom-poms.
H was super excited about this project. Here he is getting ready to pick out the color combinations. I only helped by suggesting: "What colors do they like? What colors do you see them wearing?" otherwise the combos were all chosen by him.
Color combos! We ended up picking three for everyone, so a couple of these are still waiting for the third color choice.
Everything was dyed on the stove top. H helped put the packets in the water and by stirring the yarn.
When it first goes in the pot, the water is colored, and within 30 minutes we saw the yarn soak up the colors, and the water went clear.
Rinsing out in a glass bowl in the sink. With wool yarn, you have to be careful not to agitated too much, and not to switch temperatures too fast, or else it will felt.
Hanging out to dry on our decorated balcony. This worked perfectly because there's a ceiling fan above it.
Then I wound it on the niddy noddy, which H thinks is a hilarious name. Casper then inspected the yarn :)
Here's a sequence of three yarns. Soaking in the dye, wrapped up in a towel and hung to dry, and then wound into a ball.
This was a fun color combination. I worried that the purple would be too dark, but once it dried it looked great.
Pretty yarn! I love how the colors looked different at each stage.
I then knit them up together on my knitting machine, and stitched them up.
All finished! We made 6 hats, one for each classmate (and one for H), and then an infinity scarf for his teacher.
Here they are all lined up, and me modeling the scarf. So much fun!
