Knitting Olympics is progressing along, and I have made a little progress on my scarf, but it isn't enough to take a picture of yet to show progress. Hopefully I'll get enough done in the next day or two to be able to take another pic for comparison sake.

I've been visiting some of the blogs of my fellow Olympic knitters, and there are some really great things being made! It's great to be able to see the progress everyone is making, and just imagine at the end of all of this how many pictures of completed items there will be...pretty colours, pretty articles of clothing...so much work being put into this, we all deserve a pat on the back for sticking to our guns!

I decided during this that I would challenge myself (other than the scarf) at attempting to dye some wool with Kool-Aid. I finished my 3rd ball/skein yesterday, and have 2 more to go. In my previous post, you can see the Tropical Punch ball I did, which was the first one. Here are a couple pictures of my second attempt:

This is the front and back views of the skein. Sorry that the pics aren't all that good or accurate in colour...it was the same night I took the pics in my previous post and I guess I was standing too close so the pics are kinda washed out. Actually in both of these pics you can't really see the difference, but the colour didn't distribute evenly for some reason. The wool on the outer side of the bunch was darker (a pretty shade of almost green), while the wool towards the middle was lighter and seemed closer to a blue colour...maybe the closest you could call it would be teal, but I'm not totally sure.

Anyway, the Kool-aid I used was the cherry flavour that changed colours when it was mixed up, and I must say that regardless of it not dying evenly it looks great. I was worried thought that at one end of the yarn it would be the darker green colour and the other end would be the lighter almost blue colour. I thought that whatever I knit up would look freakish! However, when I was winding up the yarn, it appears that it is varrigated! The dark and light colours are distributed all through the ball. I think it should (hopefully) look neat when it gets knit up. I'm thinking I might make a hat or scarf out of this, and a hat or scarf out of the Tropical punch one....or kids mittens if I have enough (both balls are 3 1/2 ounces).

The one I did yesterday was with grape Kool-aid, and again for some reason it didn't distribute evenly. I turned the yarn over and made sure it was all submerged in the mixture...everything I could think of to make sure it was all exposed. But for some reason, the wool on the outer edges is darker. I am hoping it will do the varrigated thing like the one above did. I need to make 2 more balls of the purple for a project I have in mind...a felted bag. The only thing...the other two might have different shades than this one because the store only had 1 package of grape Kool-aid left...grrr!!...so I got the no-name brand grape instead. I'm thinking that it's really the same thing so it should turn out...I hope...if not, then I'll have a funky looking bag! Oh well, c'est la vie! I'm having fun doing it, and I went the extra "mile" to add some challenge to my knitting olympics challenge. I don't think that I'll have the time (mid terms next week) to start, let alone finish, the bag as an extra knitting olympics challenge, however, I think I am also going to add to my challenge and get my nephew's other green sock completed. Remember, my challenge includes trying to find the time to get my knitting done because of school, homework, and mid terms...

Happy Knitting!