I'll probably never be a Yarn Dyer, but occasionally I like to play make believe yarn dyer by over-dyeing random skeins I find in my stash, usually with whatever dye I can find around the house.

Last week I came across a random white skein of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport and decided it would be fun to play with.

I'd already done some regular Kool-Aid dyeing last month, so I wanted to try something more adventurous. I came across this tutorial on speckle dyeing with Kool-Aid and decided to give it a try.

I used my swift to turn the ball (?) into a hank for dyeing, and then soaked it as directed. The next step was to "squeeze out most of the excess water," which I did, but my problems with the experiment may have started here. More on that later. I spread the damp hank out in an aluminum baking dish.

I had Kool-Aid packets in black cherry, tropical punch and blue raspberry lemonade (how gross does that sound?). I sprinkled both sides of the hank, perhaps a bit too liberally, wrapped the dish in aluminum foil and baked it for 45 minutes.

When it was done, I unwrapped the pan and it was steaming, so I assumed things had gone well. I left it to cool, and then when I went to remove it . . .

Some of the yarn was stuck to the pan! I had to basically tear the yarn off the pan in several spots, it was super sticky and/or possibly burnt on. The instructions said to rinse it, but I had a sneaking suspicion that wasn't going to get all the Kool-Aid out, so I opted to soak it in luke warm water with some wool wash. A LOT of dye came off, though the yarn looked unchanged.

I hung it to dry, and the color, though not really speckled isn't bad. But . . .

The yarn broke in several spots where I had to yank it off the pan. I'm not sure if it's salvageable yet, as I haven't tried to do anything with it, but it's certainly disappointing. Should the yarn have been wetter? Did I use too much Kool-Aid? Would another kind of pan have worked better? And why did so much dye come out? The yarn was already burnt in spots, I certainly couldn't have heated it longer! A lot of questions remain.