The Seashelly Tales

I can see myself blowing my budget on Kool Aid. I'm collecting as many different flavors as I can. Got 14 - missing the green Lemon-Lime. From now on, it's an experiment. Dyeing with Kool Aid is amazingly easy! I just did single colors for now. Soak the wool in warm water. Mix the package in the same temp water. Add the wool. Add enough water to cover the wool. Cook - stovetop or microwave. When the water is clear - you're done. Ratio: 1 pkg Kool Aid to 1 oz wool. First batch: Jamaica - spoon shows the water = clear! This shade is just absolutely perfect! No need to change the ratio for this color! Second batch: Strawberry Kiwi This is a nice shade of pink. Could be a bit darker. Maybe increase the ratio - use more Kool Aid. But it's still a nice shade. Third batch: Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade: This shade also came out lighter than I'd like. It's still pretty, but for a deeper blue, will probably need to double the ratio. Here they al

The problem with spinning, is soon you start thinking of dyeing your own fiber, making your own roving , blending different fibers together. I soon had my eye on this: This is a Fancy Kitten Drum carder. You can process far more wool than simple hand carders . The bats that come off this well, we're jumping ahead a bit. Well, there was some money owed me that recently got repaid! Thank You! (if you are reading this), so I decided I would get me one of these "toys". But, first, you had to prep the wool - you have to clean the wool before you can use one of these babies. So, we start with this: So, we start with some nice clean-ish raw wool. Break it apart into manageable sections and start filling up lingerie bags - the ones you put your fancy stuff into before you toss in the washing machine. Meanwhile, removing as much veggie matter and twigs, etc. as you can. Oh, we don't stuff the lingerie bags. Keep it loose. Then we move to step 2: Which is pretty much the sam