Half Spun

Like the title says, I have half of the solar dyed roving spun. Some of the variant coloration is still evident, not much, but some. :o/




My knitting mojo has left recently. Technically not just the knitting mojo but all mojo. I have my suspicions as to why that is but that is a story for another day. Besides at this point it's all just speculation anyway. Suffice to say, I do know, by virtue of a 18 hour ER visit awhile back and subsequent tests, I am as healthy as a horse. Yep, me, healthy as a horse. lol Me, the person who snacks on things like meat, beef, ham and bacon being my grazing fodder of choice. My heart and lungs are good, notwithstanding the more years than I care to admit I've been a smoking fiend. (I am trying to remedy that btw, down from 20ish cigs a day to less than 8 usually less than 5. Yea me.) And my cholesterol is perfect. Amazingly so. I had never had my cholesterol checked before, assuming all the while it was prob'ly on the high side. My eating habits for one reason, but the greater reason being most of my 6 brothers and sisters have high cholesterol.

My numbers are thus:
ttl cholesterol 144
Triglycerides 49
HDL 43
LDL 91

It's nice to know that I don't have to give up meat as I try to give up smoking. :o)

Keeping It Green

Such a beautiful day today, crystal clear skies, pleasant temperature, and a light wispy breeze. By 9:00AM I knew I'd be spending the entire day outside. I worked a few rows of a baby blanket and decided today was not a day for knitting. Today was a day for spinning.

As I sat there spinning away, nearly finished with the current batch of fibers I've been working on, it dawned on me I was soon going to be needing another batch of fibers. Given the near perfect weather of the day I decided to do another batch of solar dyeing. This time I dyed fiber rather than yarn. I dug around in the stash and came up with nearly 5 oz of roving.


Notice how I have wound the roving into a loose haphazard ball. I did this hoping for an uneven absorption of the dye, I also stuffed the ball into the dye bath dry, for the same reason.

Here, as you can see, the fiber is "brewing" in the sun. I used foil to help intensify the heat of the sunshine. The ambient high today was 81, the temperature within the dye bath got up to 180 degrees. :o) Oh and btw...180 degrees is hot.....I burned myself.........duh. I used a paired of Joe's leather work gloves to handle the very hot glass jar but as I was pouring the roving out of the jar and into the strainer I managed to pour the hot water across the glove. I didn't realize it until the leather became saturated and a small hole in the little finger filled up with the water. OUCH!



But I guess it was worth it doncha think?

To be honest I was hoping for a little more variation in the color, next time I'll wind the ball tighter and/or do a little tie-dye technique. I can't wait to spin this up. I wonder if spinning will enhance the variations or blend them too much. Actually spinning the fiber is the only way I'll know. I am really poor at guessing what a dyed roving will look like after spinning.

Patio Party

The Hermitage was the site for Saturday's yarn dyeing patio party with several of my Friday Lunch and Knit buddies. The goddesses must have approved, the weather was great, if not a tad bit breezy, but it was sunny and pleasant. Not many, if any of my buddies, had ever dyed before so it was a busy day. Too busy in fact for me to even remember to take photos!! sigh.....

I did manage to get a couple of pix taken in the very beginning, unfortunately not everyone is pictured and no photos of finished yarns. (I know, I'm kicking myself, what a lousy blogger.) Hopefully I'll get some pix from those who were here and can post their photos another time.

I had the patio set-up so we had a place to wind balls and hanks, a table with the dyes (all food coloring, a gel paste I bought from Into the Oven) and a table in the yard for painting the yarn. The kitchen table was left for all the fabulous food everyone bought. Oh YUM!!! we were grazing ALL day, not to mention the impromptu wine tasting we had and the Chocolate Syrup Kahlua. :o)

Everyone did a fabulous job of dyeing their yarns. We had some truly drop dead gorgeous reds, several beautiful blue/purple variegated, some very pretty green with bits of pink, purple, and yellow, a happy happy rainbow that reminds me of the Grateful Dead dancing bear, and even had a marvelous polka dot! We also resurrected a family heirloom that was originally pink but had faded to the point of not being wearable. Now it has a marvelous blue/purple kettle dyed yarn look to it and is definitely wearable once again. Looking back on the days events I can't help but giggle when I think about all the knitting demons that were here that day and not one single stitch was created. Ya know, come to think of it, I'm not sure knitting was even discussed!

Here are a few pix I did managed to take early in the day, and a shot of the yarn I dyed using up all the left overs later that evening.



Oh yeah in case you're wondering, we painted/zapped, and also kettle dyed. My yarns reading from left to right 330m of Shepherd Baby Wool that was originally light green (the color now is a little more teal) 180yards Aerobic originally peach, and 2 skeins of STR medium wt (380 yards each) Um yeah remember it's a BOY! :o)

Another Convert

Hey guys meet Joyce!

Joyce is one of my new Rav peeps. She is a new sock knitter that will very soon become an experienced sock knitter....she's really cranking them out! On Sunday she mentioned in our Illin' Knitter group (Ravelry link) that she wanted to learn about koolaid dyeing. Um yeah like I was going to let that desire of one so close to me go unfulfilled. :o)

Yesterday Joyce came over to my house to play.

And why do you suppose this woman looks so happy standing at a kitchen sink, cuz she was then the very proud (and deservedly so) owner of 2 two new hand dyed sock yarns and a yummy alpaca for a yet to be determined bit of knitterly goodness. See?

Ooops the yellow/orange/pink pic didn't come out. Go to Joyce's blog to see much better pix! It was very good day and we plan on having many more. We already have a few more adventurous dyeing jobs to think about, like making our own sock and scarf blanks.

Wanna see what I did? Actually I didn't really have a plan, I just pulled out a bunch of different things just in case Joyce was not able to find appropriate yarn on such short notice. She did find some for herself so I had lots of option sitting on the table. I had some naked KnitPicks in lace wt and sock wt. I had 5 skeins of Sirdar Balmoral which is a dk wt 72% wool, 25% alpaca, and 3% silk, in a light sage green. I had 5 skeins of Louet Riverstone 100% wool bulky/chunky wt in a light dust blue. I had just bought this stuff during one of Webs recent clearance sales. And I also had two bunches of rovings, both from the Motherload. One bunch of natural undyed, 130 grams, and the other already dyed in an I'll-never-wear-it-autumnal-golden-orange, 247 grams.

I decided to begin with the already dyed roving. I may have mentioned this before but it's apparent that the person who dyed this stuff from the Motherload did two things I would have done differently. 1) she must have used a combination dyestuff like Rit or something cuz the amount of the dye that bleeds out is incredible, and not usable, not for wool anyway (I've tried, hmm make note, throw a bunch of cotton in there next time) and 2) she didn't set nor even rinse the fibers after dyeing.

So anyway getting by those troubles is no big deal and I soldiered on. I began making thin streaks, black and brown, on the roving using a drinking straw as my tool.



It took a really long time. For the next batch I used a paint brush MUCH faster. Duh.

After Joyce left I decided given I had everything already out and sitting there, I'd do two more batches. I drop the Riverstone in a big pot making the light dusty blue a navy blue, and while that simmered I'd dye the natural roving.

I laid the roving out like above but this time I mixed my dye (burgundy) in a little 2oz fine spray bottle and sprayed one side. I flipped the whole thing over and then sprayed it with electric purple and royal blue. Put another layer of plastic wrap on it, rolled it up, and zapped it.

After all that roving was done I checked on the big pot and while the yarn had taken on some nice shades of blue there was still sooooo much dye in the pot it hadn't even lighted up even a tiny bit! Dang this dye is CONCENTRATED!!!!!! (see below for dye info)

Out came the Riverstone and in went the Balmoral. I do have to confess that I did add a touch more dye to the pot cuz I didn't want it all the same blue. I added a tiny bit of forest green and smidgen of black.

When the Balmoral was done simmering there was STILL dye in the water so I threw in both the lace wt and sock KnitPicks. Finally around 10:15 PM the dye was exhausted but not nearly as exhausted as I was! :o)

So here is what I've got:

Balmoral, overdyed icky autumnal hued roving and the spray dyed natural roving.

I'm hoping this spins up into some tweedy goodness. Below is the Balmoral, just look at what 3% silk does for this yarn! This close up of the Balmoral is what it really looks like, not as bright as it looks in the group pic, nice and smokey.


The spray dyed roving.

The next pic is the Riverstone, and the KnitPicks.


My camera hates blues!!!! The picture below is the Riverstone and closer to the real color than the pic above but it still is much darker than even this pic. I don't know what to say about the KnitPick photos. The lace wt. is more purple/wine color very dark and deep and the green has a lot more life to it and much deeper in color. Tell ya what, put a navy filter over your eyes and then you'll see the colors better.



I'm thinking of using the lace wt doubled for a pair of sock cuz although I like making lace I don't wear it. Of course the sock wt merino (green) will be socks, and then of course the rovings will both be socks.......uh oh, I think Joyce's enthusiasm for socks must be contagious!

Ok, I gotta git, the tweedy roving is calling me.

Dye Info:
AmeriColor Soft Gel Paste Food Color
Purchased online from Into The Oven
Very good prices and this soft gel is sooooo easy to mix, much easier than Wilton's paste.

Ravelympic Training

Today I began my Ravelympic training. I'm entered into a one event, but have multiple projects. Whirling Dervish I is my attempt to dye (my training done today) so it will spin into a yarn with a really long color sequence. Below is the 493 grams of pencil roving I started with . It is part of the Motherload windfall of last summer.



I'm not going to bother with the particulars of how I figured the length of the color sequence at this point. IF it works out OK then I will go ahead and explain it, but if it doesn't work then it'd just be a waste of time to document it here. I have taken pretty decent notes so if it does work, then I'll be able to do it again. (sometimes I am smarter than I pretend to be I actually took notes!!!) :o)

Even though I was in town Thursday, Friday and Saturday, (more times I've been in town in the previous month!) I didn't even think about buying more dyestuff, thus I had to use what I had on hand today. Obviously my intelligence is fleeting.

The color sequence begins with yellow then green, blue, violet, purple, red, orange, and repeats itself for 3 full sequences and ends with another yellow. None of the colors are exactly the same. The first sequence was dyed with Easter egg dye, the second and third sequence were dyed with food color (some regular some neon) and the last orange and yellow were dyed with Koolaid. Each color is approximately 13 grams or 11 ft of pencil roving.



I applied the dye with an eyedropper and/or paintbrush. Each color was wrapped in plastic wrap. When it was all dyed I wound it into a huge Tupperware container.

The first layer.



the next...



Another layer.



One more layer.



And a little bit more.



It was an awfully tight fit, both in the container and the microwave.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll do with this yarn yet. I'm only spinning it for the Handspun Heptathalon. I might squeeze two sweaters out of this by working it along with a another solid rather than using it all in one sweater like the typical Rainbow Kauni Cardigan. (the link is to the pattern pdf) The colors here are a little much for me and I think they will only get brighter when spun, but maybe toned down nicely by working it with a solid.

The yarn is still cooling. I'm being extra careful not to handle it too much. Hot, wet, roving, might felt just by looking at it! LOL Tomorrow is supposed to be warm, hot actually. There's a heat advisory already posted for the area, we're expecting temps of 100+. Everything should dry nicely outside tomorrow.

Whirling Dervish II, my second project for the Ravelympics, is merely to spin this stuff up. There is 449 gr of the natural cream color, 446 gr of the natural lt grey, and 483 gr of the natural dk grey. Total grams 1378.



I know 1378 gr sounds like a lot to spin, especially if it is the 2nd of 4 projects I have planned, but I still think it is doable. Take a closer look at how this fiber is prepared.



Honestly I could knit with this as it is, but I want to add a bit more twist to it and make a 2 ply. I'm not keen on unspun type yarns. I'm guessing this was prepared on some Viking combs and then drawn through a very tiny diz. This too is from the Motherload, it's natural and still pretty sheepy, lots of lanolin.

Whirling Dervish III is this batch.


It is 647 gr of a variety of browns. It too is from the Motherload and was originally pencil roving like that of the first picture above but had been dyed already. Last Summer I washed, predrafted it and rolled it into the balls you see here.

The fourth Ravelympic project is "Hmmmmm" For that one I'm going to make a cardi out of the handspun I just did. (I think I told you that already) I still don't have the pattern picked out but there are several in the running. I know it's prob'ly crazy to have this project on top of all the others, but I've got to have something for bedtime knitting, it's not like I can spin while I'm lounging in bed!

Weaving and Dyeing

OK first things first, pic of the impetus for my posting today.


Yes, I'm into the blues and greens. Yea!

Next up, yarn barf.a.k.a knitted lace.

It's going pretty well. Yes I've had a few oops. Primarily forgotten YO's, but I caught them soon enough. 6 more rows of the edge chart and I'm done. Wonder how many oops there will be that I didn't notice! :o) Oh, and can I tell ya how much I despise working on these pole vault worthy length needles?!? UGH! I went merrily along on my convert vintage dpn needles clear up to the middle of the last repeat of the chart for the body. Then I couldn't cram anymore stitches on the needle....sigh Couldn't find my vintage circs in this size and didn't dare switch to use metal ones. My gauge is out the window when I use metal needles, so out came the needles whose length is akin to the proverbial 10 ft. pole. Again I say UGH, but I must give them their due, cuz if I didn't have them the yarn barf would stagnate until who knows when.

I loath metal needles. We just can't see eye to eye. Pity that, I have 100's of them. :-/ If anyone out there is looking for some metal needles any length or type, circs, straights, dpns, any size email me. I'd love to see them go to an appreciative home. Conversely so I'd be thrilled to give a warm and loving abode to any of those vintage needles that were made of nylon, casein, (sp?), or that plastic like stuff from way back when. Any length and type would be loved and cherished, even those of the pole vaulting variety. Anyone? Anyone? BTW if you have any made from Bakelite do yourself a favor and sell them on ebay they get a pretty penny.

Let's see what else is there today, oh yeah, I tried a new-to-me KA dye technique. (I've never seen anyone else talk about this, but I'm positive someone out there has done it before) IMHO I think this has great potential.


Yes these are the same skein. I'm thrilled that I can now take pix in a decent size and they aren't bleary, correct coloration will have to wait. The true color is somewhere between the two of these. A new friend of mine, who seems to be a long lost sister, posed the question about how to get a pink/orange mottled/heather/tweedy yarn with KA. This skein is the result of experiment #1.

I used my standard sure fire mottling method with pink lemonade first. Big pot on the stove, 6 pkg of pink lemonade KA, with a dash of vinegar (I don't like to wait) and quickly throw in a hank of DRY yarn. I let the air bubbles in the fiber itself do the work for me. The only cautionary tales regarding this method is that you must act quickly to get all the yarn submerged or run the risk of a graduated skein or large splotches. I've never had any problem with felting the yarn as I manipulate it in the pot to make sure it stays submerged, the water isn't that hot yet, and I don't really agitate it, I just keep pushing it below water level so it's not floating. With particularly lofty yarns this can take a while. To remedy that problem, (I do things quickly, and I don't like to babysit yarn) I purchased a round cooling rack. You know the kind of wire racks you'd cool a cake or cookies on after baking. I snipped one outer ring of the rack which gives me enough play in the ring to be able to wedge the rack into my pot below water level, thus holding the more lofty fiber submerged.

After the dye was exhausted I removed my nicely mottled pink skein and let it cool enough to handle easily. I'm using "pink" here rather flippantly, I would have called the color pink salmon or perhaps peachy melon, not really a true pink. I know/have heard to add a bit of grape or some other blue based KA to make it more pink, but I wanted to see exactly what color I'd get with just the pink lemonade.

Now comes the new part. I took a small 2 oz fine spray mist bottle, put about two tablespoons of vinegar in it, with 2 pkg of orange KA and then filled the bottle with water. I laid the skein out in the bottom of my sink spread out as much as the ties would allow and spritzed the orange on it. I continually turned , twisted and fluffy the skein, sometimes even shaking and fluffing it in the air while spritzing. (No, I did not wear gloves, and yes my hand was completely orange.) After the entire contents of the bottle was used, I placed the skein in a steam bath over my big pot and let the color set. As for the orange hand? No problem, a sprinkle of baking soda and all was well,

All in all I'm pleased with the outcome, there is great potential here. I would rather have had a truer pink, but up against the orange it did "pinken" up a bit. Experiment #2 will use the same procedure but with colors not so similar. I'm thinking yellow and green, maybe blue and yellow that could produce some nice greens within the skein too. hmmmm.....

Earth Hour

Today is Earth Hour day. So what are you going to do in your hour of darkness??

Me? I know what I won't be doing. I won't be working on this:




My first real lace. If you consider a pattern that does have a resting row "real" lace. I've heard that some don't. Anyway, it's light, airy, made on #3 needles with thread-like wool, and has deliberate holes in it.....sounds like lace to me. I have nearly 6 repeats of the second chart done. The scarf that is shown in the pattern pic is 9 repeats, but I'm not familiar with the yarn and not really sure if the author even mentions what size needles she used. I might stop soon, I don't really want anything too big. When I run another lifeline after this repeat I'll take it off the needles and measure.

The pattern I'm using Zetor Scarf by Jatta Saukko.

The yarn is Knit Picks Bare Merino Lace wt. Obviously it is no longer bare. This yarn has been dunked in countless dye baths over the last year or so. It was first abused (lovingly so) in my solar dye experiment, a center pull ball, in a can, in the sun. :o) For the life of me I can't find a pic of the finished yarn but it really was a pretty robin egg blue as clear and beautiful as the sky that day. A nice color but not a "me" color, so it became one of the many "orphan" skeins I have hanging around, literally. Orphan skeins are those that I'm not thrilled with colorwise, but have potential. (don't they all???) When I begin a new dye project, I gather a few of the appropriate orphan skeins to cover any oops contingencies. What's an oops contingency you may ask, oh, anything from the unintended color mix made or perhaps a dye bath that hasn't been exhausted. Rather than pouring the unwanted/non-exhausted dye bath down the drain, I throw orphan skeins in it. Oh hell, I even use the orphan skeins to wipe up the occasional spill! Eventually there comes a day when I really like the look of a orphan and he/she is adopted for a pattern. The day before last was adoption day for this skein. She's happy and so am I.


I really am enjoying myself. I knew that I would. So why has it taken so long for me to finally get around to knitting lace?? Cuz of this:



That's my working copy of the pattern and charts.....sigh One note card per row, not including the resting rows. It's not that I don't like charts. And it's not that I don't like written text. (I don't and won't get in to that argument it means nothing to me.) It's cuz I have problems with my eyes. I can't depend on them. Some days I can see, others not so much. It's all part and parcel of the migraines, "visual disturbances". Don't bother suggesting post-it notes, magnetic boards, highlighted portions, huge photocopies, etc, believe me I've tried them all. They all do work and I can use them on "good" days, but often times good days are far and few between, so I came up with this. It works for me. It's very portable, and long term, it's nearly impossible for me to lose my place even if I put the project down for months. I use this method with anything that is complicated or involved, and with colorwork too. Sure it takes time to write it all out like that, but I can get all the chart work done on one good day and then have plenty of not so good days of relatively mindless, somewhat sightless knitting. It's a good trade off for me. If there are any others out there thinking about doing this whacked out thing too here's a little tip.....clamp or rubber band all the card together tightly (in both directions) and use a drill with the 1/8 inch bit, or smaller just big enough for the ring, to drill the hole. If you put the stack of cards on top of a cardboard box one bore through the stack and back out in reverse will make a really nice hole for the ring. Oh and you could also use little pocket notebooks and do the same thing, they work just fine, but aren't as durable and may not have enough pages.

Trying to keep cozy

Sorry. Its been awhile. sigh.

In the span of the last few weeks my knitting mojo has waxed and waned, ooohhhh 'bout 30 times, my sewing fever has bubbled forth and then receded, and believe it or not I got into another house shuffle. I basically have nothing to show for any of it.

I do have a teapot and cup cozy show you. Big deal a whole 3 hours worth of knitting. I like it though and it serves its purpose well.



The need for a teapot cozy was something I had never considered, that is to say until somewhat recently. We've been lambasted with a winter that brings back fond childhood memories, lots of snow and biting cold. So cold that after a brief time outside you couldn't feel it anymore, and your nose stopped dripping cuz, well, to be frank, your snot froze. I want to go sledding with my buddies, I want to build snow forts and igloos, but, David lives in AZ, I don't know where Lewis is, and I live in the middle of a corn field, no slopes in sight. Not to mention I don't like being cold and wet any more and I'd prob'ly break my neck. We did some really stupid sledding back then, the obstacle course through the trees and the jump off the cliff readily come to mind.....

Anyway, the need for a cozy was finally realized. My workroom is on the second floor. OK, it IS the second floor.------and if the truth be told, Joe would say it is the entire house. Sorry Babe, thanx for being you and looking pass everything. :-)------- I think I've mentioned this before, prob'ly last winter, there are only 2 heat vents on the second floor, neither of which is in my "main" workroom. It's cold up there. That's all well and good if I'm guzzling Mt. Dew, but I'm making a concerted effort to break my Dew addiction. Yes, I'm addicted to the stuff. I don't even really like it that much, but I am a slave to it's cold, readily available, drinkability. And that is why the need for a teapot cozy has finally come to fruition. The ambient temp of my workroom is at odds with a pot of hot tea.

Other knitting news around here? I've finished the second version of Dancing with the Devil. I'm calling it Boogyin' with Beelzebub. This version is slightly shorter and has a more traditional neck/shoulder, in other words, it fits higher more like a "regular" raglan. I'll have pix, perhaps later today, and another freebie pattern soon. I've put off writing up the pattern 'til my brain decides it wants to work properly again. The fact that I'm blogging is a good sign, unless this text is total gobblity goop, then all bets are off. :o)

Another hat flew off the needles, the "Tweedy Topper" from a VK a few years back. It's a cotton hat that reminds me of one of the those hats you'd see a fisherman wearing with lures stuck in it. I'll give all info and pix next time. Lots of changes will be forth coming for this pattern! There has also been several experiments with "string" manipulation, and tons of sketches for new things and lots of "what ifs" to keep me busy. When one of those "what ifs" comes to be I'll share.

I've done some dyeing too. Seven skeins of this:






And two orphan skeins.




All done with KoolAid, and food coloring.

The sewing fever I alluded to earlier in this post began as a couple new bags refashioned, one from a leather jacket and two from leather skirts. The fever came to screeching halt when I made the very first cut on a huge piece of leather and it was inexplicably wrong. I did measure twice, in fact I measured no less than 6 times. I hadn't trusted the level of brain function I had the first day I started planning the bags so naturally I measured again (3 more times) on day two when I was actually going to cut the leather. Um, yeah.....the measurements were right, the orientation of the leather was wrong..........gah. The leather has been in time out for a while.

I'm going to try something new. It's been years since I've had any kind of schedule, and if you know anything at all about me, you know that I never know, what the date is, and usually I don't know what day of the week it is, so having said that, keep your fingers crossed...

Beginning next week I'm going to have Weaving Wednesdays. I got out my giganto homemade weavette loom the other day and made another square for the patio rug I started last summer. The knitting mojo and the sewing fever were both ebbing very low and I can usually kick start one or the other by weaving a simple square. That's when the Weaving Wednesday idea hit me. I figure if I make at least one square every week from now until summer the rug will done when the warm weather hits. It also has the added bonus of making me aware of what day it is, it "forces" me to blog more frequently, and will hopefully keep the mojo and fever bubbling. Wish me luck in this endeavor, but if you know more than one thing about me, then you'll know schedules, time constraints and I don't get along. :o)

A Swatch of Jello

Just a quickie post to show you how the tri-colored Jello dyed yarn works up.

Even though these aren't my colors, I kinda like it.



No clue as to what I'll actually make with this. Although, I'm thinking about a couple Nora Gaughn designs......the Luce scarf (Egads another scarf!) or the Target Wave mittens.

Uh Oh....looking at her photos I saw this sweater again.....Must. Resist. Urge to cast on.

Debbie New has a interesting mitten design that is very similar to the Target Waves...sorry, I can't find a pic on the tubes to show you. I'm pretty sure it's in Unexpected Knitting though, one of "bestest" book ever. :o)

There's Always Room for Jello

Yep, there will always be Jello on my pantry shelves from this moment on.

Behold....



Not a trace of stiffness this morning. No physical anomalies that would betray the dye from which these yarns sprung forth. I'm happy.

Next run to the store will include Jello, lots of it. There are plenty of other experiments I want to try. I have a morbid curiosity to find out just how far I can go before I actually ruin the wool.

While I was doing the sprinkle/smooch/zap method it occurred to me, "painting" with a thin syrupy jello water solution would yield an unbelievable amount of control as to the placement of the dye. Obviously the semi-gelled globs posed no problems in the end results (other than a more saturated color). I was also thrilled with the fact that the colors from one section did not readily bleed into one another. I was dreading the awful muddy mess that usually occurs between two colors that fight each other. Notice the green/orange transition...wonderful.

I don't think the center pull ball/crockpot method would work very well. The dye/color itself doesn't seem to leach/seep/wick very well, but your "normal" crockpot method should work just fine.

I only have a single box of Strawberry Banana on the shelf....sigh

I wanna paint a picture.

Jello on wool.