It seems to work fine the way you have it. Maybe you have more than one k alias? Try changing it to something that is guaranteed to be unique, such as kcolor or whatever. Changing the name of the alias may be all you need.
Edit: If you're getting no such channel, then it isn't your identifier that is the problem, but how you're using it. How are you calling it? $k(7, text) isn't how you're calling it... you'd need something else on that line (echo, msg, etc).
