It would seem that the secondary technique of letting the yarn soak on cold in the Kool-Aid gave me more coverage than letting soak in just plain water and heating with the color. You can see the results here (from left to right): black cherry, strawberry, tropical punch, and watermelon/cherry. The black cherry resulted in a brick color, which does not look great on me. The watermelon/cherry was a pale dusty rose; quite pretty, but not really what I was going for. That left the two middle skeins. I overdyed the strawberry with the extra cherry packet. It now looks very similar to the tropical punch, yet more vivid. Both are pretty close to a blood red. I have a friend bringing me back some more tropical punch from the states. If I can get the tropical punch as vivid, it would be easier to dye that at double strength than to dye everything strawberry then cherry. With the number of dye batches I am going to need, I am a bit worried about variations in the color. I hope to swatch up the strawberry/cherry in the meantime to see how it looks and get a first stab at the gauge.
In two days we are off to Madrid. I have never been to Spain before, so I am looking forward to the tapas. Luckily we have a friend house sitting, so the ferret will not be lonely. Any recommendations? We plan to mostly hit up the museums near our hotel and eat a bunch of food. I have brought the baby on vacation to visit family before, but have never tried sightseeing, so we don’t want to overbook ourselves.