The unsuspecting yarn and Kool Aid:

Following the lovely instructions in this article on Knitty, I washed my Wool of the Andes, and left it to soak.

While I prepped the pot of Black Cherry Kool Aid.

The yarn was added to the pot, where it hung out, nice and hot, for about 20 minutes, going from this:

To this:

I rinsed it and wrung it out, and then hung it to dry.

One key thing I learned during this – gloves are not optional. At least I remembered my apron.

I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I had to try doing some handpainted yarn, too. I broke out the Paint Your Own laceweight, and mixed up some Cherry, Pink Lemonade, Orange, Lemonade and Grape Kool Aid. I popped it into the microwave for a few minutes: , rinsed it off, , and hung it up to dry. While the yarn was drying, I cleaned up the mess from the handpainting , and waited.

A few minutes with my swift and winder, and TA DA!
(Considerably less blurry in real life.) I immediately cast on the black cherry yarn for a One Skein Wonder. After realizing that I was going to run out of yarn before I did the edging, I ran to AC Moore and picked up some ladder ribbon yarn for the edging and finished it tonight.
I’m really thrilled with how it turned out. I love the sort-of variegated nature of the Kool-Aid dye. I’m planning to turn the laceweight into a Lacey. We’ll see how that goes.