Dying Wool Interlock Shorties With Jello

I've been wanting to dye my wool.  A few things have stood in my way though.  Budget, even with Daddy Monkey having a new job we are still below the poverty line.  We have money for extras, but with the price of wool its hard to justify adding the price of acid dyes plus shipping.

So I dug around the internet and diacovered wool can be dyed in kool aid, jello and the wiltons (and similar brands) of colouring paste I use for colouring marshmallow fondant.

The idea of boiling or microwaving my wool sent fears of felting down my spine.  Shrinkage of wool is not in my budget.  But then as I failed to fall asleep tonight I remembered  it is agitation and scrubbing (also agitation) that felts wool.  And temperature change in water the at shrinks wool.

Ok I thought, I can try this on his white shorties.  Getting the stains out if them always sucks and he likely won't be wearing them next summer, and its August already.

So I tried 2 packs of no name jello (red) in the microwave method.
1. Microwaveable bowl of water and some vinegar (close to one cup)
2. Mix in jello.  I used 2 bixes because one didn't look dark enough and i know daddy wont want his boy in pink.
3. Submerge shorties
4. Microwave on high 2 min, rest 1.5 min and repeat until water is clear.  One of the sets of instructions I read said 3 times.  It took me 5 or 6 (I lost count).
5. Soak in clean water.  To do this I microwaved a second bowl of water 3 min, then transfered shorties to that bowl.  I read of this being done twice so I mucroved a third bowl right away.  I set the bowl with shorties on the stove as well as the empty bowl so they would be same temperature when I transfer from one bowl to another.  This way the wool shouldn't shrink.

The shorties are currently soaking in the second bowl.  My next decision will be how to dry.  I'd like to dry with my usual fast back of fan method but afraid of sticky jello water.  On the balcony on my drying rack might be safer....but I'm impatient lol.

(Next morning)
I dried them on the back of the fan and so this morning they are dry, no shrinkage or felting (yay).  They aren't a deep or completely solid red.  This (I believe) is because this wool interlock is 3% spandex and acid (and food) dyes are for wool, silk, mohair etc.  But they aren't pink.  Next up, cutting more wool to dye with Wilton colouring paste in an ice dye.