I posted the results of my Kool-Aid tests here. This is fun! I think I'm going to leave the scientific side of it alone for awhile now, and just play around. I want to see if my grey mohair will take dye well (mohair is supposed to dye excellently) or just look muddy. I've convinced myself not to buy any more yarn, even if it's cheap, so I'm limited to the skein of cotton I bought over the weekend. Maybe I can make a hat out of it...probably not enough for a baby sweater.

Research is going well, and I love our apartment and being able to cook whenever I want. Last night Patrick made sausage and rice in our new pot, and it didn't burn or anything (we used to make it in a camping pot, and the rice burnt every time). I love these new pots and pans! Tomorrow night I think I'll make Chicken Marsala (my dad made it for me over Christmas break and is was really good!). We have some asparagus and a box of couscous mix too, so it'll be a real meal (recently, we've been eating cheap, which isn't very exciting for the eye or palate). Tonight I think I'll make Pasta Primavera, which may sound exciting, but will not be...I guarantee it. It's okay though, I'm hungry.

Sausage and Rice

This recipe is from my mom; I ate it a lot as a child and I still like it! Plus it's easy to make.

Ingredients:

• 1 pkg turkey sausage links
• 1 cup celery, chopped finely
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1.5 cups uncooked white rice
• 2 small cans of condensed chicken and rice soup
• 1 cup water

1. Cut sausage into bite-sized pieces and brown over medium heat. Drain fat if there's a lot of it.
2. Add celery and onion and cook for 5 minutes, stirring.
3. Add rice, soup, and water. Cover and cook over low heat for 30 minutes or until the rice is soft.

Many people have documented methods of dyeing animal fibers (ie, wool) with Kool-Aid (see References below). Cotton is much harder to dye using these methods because it is derived from plants. I'm doing a series of experiments in order to find a method that will give the most color to cotton. I will vary solution pH, solution temperature, fiber wetting, and concentration of dye solution (after four years of chem lab, I can't escape the scientific method!). Oh yeah, Kool-Aid is a registered trademark of Kraft.

Purpose: Find conditions that give the most intense results when dyeing 100% cotton yarn with Kool-Aid.

Background: Cotton is a plant fiber and is made of cellulose, a polymeric sugar. It is hydrophilic (water loving), which is why cotton towels are so absorbent. Dyes tend to be water-soluble but also have substantial organic components (this is what imparts color in the visible range). The Kool-Aid I will use in this experiment contains Red #40, which is an azo dye. Its chemical structure can be found here.

Materials:

• Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton (100% cotton)
• Kool-Aid unsweetened drink mix, Tropical Punch
• White vinegar (to lower pH)
• Baking soda (to raise pH)
• Dishwashing liquid (to prepare fiber for dyeing)

Procedure/Results:

The general procedure I will use in dyeing my cotton has been adapted from the references listed below. Because I am running multiple trials, I will use small amounts of cotton and kool-aid solution; instructions should be modified accordingly based on how much yarn is to be dyed.

pH/Temperature Trials:

1. Soak 12" lengths of cotton in hot water with a little dishwashing liquid for 30 minutes to wet the yarn. Do the next two steps while the yarn is soaking.
2. Create master dye solution using 1 packet of Kool-Aid and 3/4 cup of water. Depending on the pH you would like to achieve, add (a) 1/4 cup white vinegar (low pH), (b) 1/4 cup water (medium pH), or (c) 1/4 cup water and 2 tbsp baking soda (high pH - be prepared, it'll fizz!).
3. Measure 1/3 cup of dye solution into an appropriate container (a non-aluminum pot for the high-temperature trial, anything you please for the other trials). For the high-temperature trial, heat the solution until it almost boils. For the low-temperature trial, refrigerate the solution for 30 minutes. For the room-temperature trial, do nothing yet.
4. Squeeze out excess water from yarn. For each container of solution, add one 12" piece of yarn, making sure it's submerged.
5. Allow yarn to soak while keeping solution temperature constant (stove for hot, fridge for cold, countertop for room-temp) for 1.5 hours. For the high-temp trials, you may have to add more water as existing water evaporates. That should be okay since we only care about the absolute amount of dye present.
6. Let yarn come to room temperature, then remove from solution and rinse thoroughly. Let dry.

It appears that we get roughly the same color intensity at a range of pHs and temperatures. Based on this information, future trials will be done at room temperature (much easier than monitoring a stove for hours!).

Concentration/Wetting Trials:

1. For the wetting trial, I soaked the yarn in a warm water/dish soap solution for 30 minutes. For the non-wetting trial, I did nothing to the yarn.
2. For both wetting and non-wetting trials, I created a master solution out of 1 packet of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid and 6.25 tsp of water.
3. I doled this master solution out into five cups, divided as follows: .25 tsp, .5 tsp, 1 tsp, 1.5 tsp (1/2 tbsp), 3 tsp (1 tbsp) of master solution. I then filled each cup half full with water (all cups were filled to the same level to control for solution volume, which people claim does not affect results). I then added 1/4 cup of white vinegar to each solution, even though I found previously that it doesn't make a difference.
4. I put yard-long pieces of yarn in each solution and let them sit for 1.5 hours at room temperature.
   
   
   
   
5. I rinsed each piece with soapy water, then clean water, and let them dry.

As you can see in the pictures (which look a little more orange than the yarn actually is), wetting with warm soapy water for 30 minutes definitely increases the intensity of the dye. Not wetting gives a paler and more vareigated effect. Also, the more dye present in solution, the stronger the color. Not much of a surprise, but good to verify it.

Since the teaspoon measurements aren't very intuitive, here are their equivalent amounts in yards of yarn per packet of Kool-Aid:

Conclusions: From these limited experiments, we can conclude that when dyeing cotton yarn, the most color is obtained by using large amounts of Kool-Aid and pre-wetting the yarn. Adding vinegar and heating are less important to the intensity of the color.

References:

1. Burch, Paula. FAQ: Is Kool-Aid really colored with Procion MX dye? (No!) (explains why Kool-Aid dyes do not work on cotton)
2. Harris-Pruitt, Barbara. Dyeing Protein Fibers with Kool-Aid: Basic Howto (includes microwave and stovetop methods for dyeing wool)
3. Hergert, Anna. Dyeing to Win, (mentions that cotton dyes better in cold solutions)
4. Hiott, Nicolette. Hey! Kool-Aid! Fun and Funky Kool-Aid Dyeing (three different techniques for dyeing wool with Kool-Aid)
5. Knitter's Review. Quick, Fun Dyeing for Beginners (lots of pictures of dyed yarns)
6. McMillan, Caroline ed. Wool Works: dyeing fibers (a compilation of emails with advice on dyeing with Kool-Aid)
7. Nolke.com Veni Vidi ViDYE (lots of good pictures accompanying instructions on dyeing both wool and cotton)
8. Squeo, Melissa. What is FD&C Red Dye #40 and why is it used? (background information about Red #40)

Other Results:

I tried doing more non-scientific tests with the rest of my cotton (~220 yards) with less-than-stellar results. First, I tried to dye it orange using 1 packet Orange, 1 packet Mandarina Tangerina, and 2 packets Lemonade. It came out faintly yellow, but nothing noticeable. Probably a combination of low concentration and the faintness of the orange compared to red.

Then I dyed half of the skein in 1 packet Tropical Punch, 1 Orange, and 1 Strawberry, which gave a light pink. Then I decided to try to overdye it blue. Unfortunately, when I re-wetted the yarn, most of the pink washed out (guess I didn't rinse well enough after dyeing the first time around). The blue (6 packets of Raspberry Ice Blue) didn't take very well, though more of it showed up after drying for some reason. I think the problem was that I didn't wash off the soap after wetting the yarn, and it kept the dye molecules from entering the fiber. Oh well!

In the future, it would also be better to use Blue Moon Berry instead of Raspberry Ice Blue because the raspberry was a pretty light blue, even in solution.

Then I knitted up a small swatch in garter stitch and dyed this in a packet of Strawberry. It turned a nice pink, and when I unravelled it, it was a variegated pink. Pretty cool, but impractical for large projects.

Last night, I did some experiments with dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid. It's a big thing among knitters and other fiber people. I didn't like the feel (or price) of any of the wool at Jo-Ann, so I bought some cheap kitchen cotton instead. I took pictures of my first set of results, but I don't feel like putting them up tonight. I bought more Tropical Punch to do my time/concentration experiments, but I don't feel like doing those either, and I figure that this should be a fun project, and I shouldn't force myself to do it if I don't feel like it. I'll keep you posted. What I really want is to knit something using cotton and mohair together (the mohair takes dye much better than the cotton) to make a two-toned piece. But I'm very wishy-washy about buying mohair, even the cheap stuff, because I should be saving my money. I'll think about it a few more days before I buy anything.

Okay, here are some pictures. First, we have my empty room in Atwood after I moved out on Saturday. Aww...it looks sad (and dusty!)

And here are some pictures of our living room and kitchen in our new apartment. The pictures of the bedroom didn't turn out because the window area is so much lighter than the rest of the room. Maybe I'll put up pictures later. Anyway, it's very nice...we have my big bed up and pretty white Ikea curtains hanging up. Lots of space.

Oh, and here are some AFM pictures of the sexy new polymer I mentioned a few days ago (the pictures are all 4 microns on a side, features are about 70-100 nm wide and around 10 nm tall). I like it because you can see how the spaghetti and continents are based on a dot-unit of specific, uniform size. The dimensions of this unit are related to the sizes of the polymer blocks. This uniformity is much clearer for the new polymer (141k) than for the 51k or 182k. This is because the PEO block is larger, which aids uniformity. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to this page and read my thesis or look at my senior presentation. Or you can just enjoy the pictures without understanding how I got them.

     

Ahh...today was very nice. I was productive, but it was also relaxing. Hard to believe we only moved in yesterday. The apartment looks great; plenty of space, and it already feels like home. Today we washed all our kitchen stuff (it's been out on my balcony for a year!) and I watched Patrick put a new screen on our screen door. I was so impressed...I took a picture. Maybe I'll post it tomorrow (not like there's much to see; just a shiny new screen with no holes in it). We also walked to the nursery that's a few blocks away and bought two African violets to keep my big green plant company. I'm afraid we'll have to leave them behind come fall, but we won't talk about that just yet. I also bought a packet of wildflower seeds and "planted" them in the patch of dirt in front of our door. Maybe they'll grow, maybe not. And I cooked dinner and made a healthy but tasty dessert (banana oat bars with dates; yummy but pretty amorphous, hard to eat neatly). Patrick chose to eat a popsicle instead, but I wolfed down his share of oatmeal bars as well.

I'm so happy that we get tomorrow off. It let me feel relaxed today. Good stuff...pictures coming soon!