Sunday, December 20, 2015

Kool-Aid Hat Project

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

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.

Raw Yarn

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.

Choosing Colors

Color combos! We ended up picking three for everyone, so a couple of these are still waiting for the third color choice.

Colors Chosen

Everything was dyed on the stove top. H helped put the packets in the water and by stirring the yarn.

Starting the Dye

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.

Cooking in the Color

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.

Rinsing out the dye

Hanging out to dry on our decorated balcony. This worked perfectly because there's a ceiling fan above it.

Hanging to Dry

Then I wound it on the niddy noddy, which H thinks is a hilarious name. Casper then inspected the yarn :)

On the Niddy Noddy

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.

Dye-Dry-Wind

This was a fun color combination. I worried that the purple would be too dark, but once it dried it looked great.

Purple-Green-Yellow

Pretty yarn! I love how the colors looked different at each stage.

Pretty Ball of Yarn

I then knit them up together on my knitting machine, and stitched them up.

All Stitched Up

All finished! We made 6 hats, one for each classmate (and one for H), and then an infinity scarf for his teacher.

Finished Hats

Here they are all lined up, and me modeling the scarf. So much fun!

Hats and Scarf




3 comments:

Unknown said...

Getting amazed with your work of this creation of the cap. Thanks for the sharing.

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Rebecca from ChemKnits said...

These turned out great! KoolAid dyeing is the most fun. :)

Rebecca Flys said...

Wow! I had no idea! This is great. Your photos are great. The whole thing is amazing. I'm sharing to my yarn group on Facebook for more thoughts. How does the color hold up after washing? I see this in my future. My husband's going to lose his mind.