Kool-Aid is a great dye for protein fibers such as wool, mohair or, if you've got it, possum. It does not work on cotton or other plant fibers.

For our experiments, we dyed wee bundles of yarn, along with some unspun locks of wool, which we soaked in water. Then we mixed up some water and Kool-Aid in a pint-size canning jar, dropped the yarn in and microwaved it for two minutes. We let it sit for a couple of minutes, then nuked it for another two minutes.

Hyper-fruity Raspberry Reaction feuded with Berry Blue as the jars cooled.

In our frenzy, we dumped a whole packet of Kool-Aid in, so the colours were rich and vibrant, not at all scary as we had feared. The wool took in almost all the dye, leaving the water clear — except with the Orange and Arctic Green Apple batches, which left behind some scary milky white stuff.

Here's an alarming thing about Kool-Aid: It has enough acid in it that it doesn't require any mordant. And the vibrant colours are permanent. This is fabulous for fiber artists, but, one would think, not so fabulous for kids' tummies. (In fact, spinners in the United Kingdom love Kool-Aid, but, curiously, they can't get the packets in their own country. There is a web site, www.koolaiduk.com, that helps UK consumers obtain the product.) Interestingly, the Kool-Aid web site has information and links about the dyeing possibilities of Kool-Aid.

This is all so much fun that you might even consider asking some kids to join in.

About our pound of fleece: Paint's wool is now many colours. I painted a skein of chunky spun yarn in shades of blue and purple. I vat-dyed two skeins of singles: one evergreen and one apricot. The apricot was better in theory than practice. The white wool that went in came out a nice orangey hue, but Paint's greyish wool came out a sort of mottled black and tan. When I plied the two singles together, the vibrance of the green overwhelmed the apricot so that it appears to be merely brownish tannish oak. Hello, Kool-Aid! (I'll let you know how this overdyeing experiment works out.) The remaining unspun wool was cooked in the cornflower dye and came out quite lovely.

When I got home, I rinsed all the wool in warm water. This is a fine time to remind readers of the hazards of shocking the wool. The water I used was, as it turns out, too warm, so about half the unspun fleece was felted beyond spinability. I carded the remainder to be spun and plied with the wool from Black.

For complete instructions on dyeing with Kool-Aid, see Knitty. For instructions on dyeing with food colours, see the Summer 2004 issue of Spin-Off magazine.

Editor's Note: Kool-Aid is available in Australia from USA Foods.

Kool-Aid lends its color — The News & Observer (via Spin-Off)