La Fée Verte

Having recently begun knitting with one of the hanks of yarn I dyed with Janelle at Christmas, I decided to dye the other one this weekend while the weather was nice and I could dry it outside.

I knew I wanted to do green and I knew I didn't want to bother with stripes this time. I also knew I wanted to dye by baking rather than boiling on the stove, as I did before. It turned out pretty well. Janelle had heard from someone that using straight Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid might be a bit, well, bright, and that one could use a purple flavor (yes, I realize that flavors don't have colors) like Grape to cut the neon-ness. I set up four glasses with various amounts of purple added. Purple did cut back the brightness and didn't show as its own color. Then, at the end, I decided I wanted a slightly darker mottling effect, so I added perhaps a bit too much purple to some green. It came out kind of olive. I wish now that I'd left out that last addition.

All in all, though, I'm happy. Another slight issue is that I didn't make sure that the dye got through to the inner strands of the hank. It got through, but it's very light. It definitely took up some dye, but not much.

Whilst casting about the recesses of my brain for something green to name this after, I came up with Absinthe, the popular green French libation of 19th century distilled from wormwood. It was often called "The Green Fairy." I think that fits.