Yarn Dyeing Experiment: Lupine

I've been plotting and planning to create my own line of naturally dyed yarn, and I'm now in the experimental phase.  I'm not going to go into too many details yet until I have a better feel of things, but I'm sure I'll share more here as I learn more.

Today's post is about my first attempt at dyeing yarn with lupines.  They grow thick and beautiful here in the late spring/early summer.  I spent a lovely evening gathering a bunch of it the other night with a friend, and have gathered more since to freeze for future dyeing days.

I only collected the flower stalks, and used only the flowers for the dye bath.  If you had to guess what colour that would produce, you'd probably guess blue or purple.  You'd be wrong.

While the dye bath was a lovely burgundy/pink shade, the yarn initially came out looking a sad shade of greyish-green after steeping overnight.  I was disappointed, but figured I'd overdye it with something else.  I toss the first dip yarn into a bath with pH neutral wool wash and an extra skein into the dye bath to exhaust the dye.  I left for work and left it be.  When I got home, the exhaust bath yarn was a paler sad shade of greyish-green when I pulled it out and into a rinse bath.  So imagine my surprise when I reached into the wool wash bath and pulled out a skein of lime green yarn!

First dip yarn on left, exhaust bath yarn in middle, undyed yarn on right.

I'm not entirely sure what caused the change, but I suspect the soap adjusted the pH and affected the colour of the yarn.  The chemistry is fascinating!  I'm so happy with the results - even the exhaust bath yarn.

For a bit of background here, I used Briggs and Little Sport yarn, divided into 25 g skeins for experimentation.  I premordent the yarn with alum, with cream of tarter as an assist.  I forgot to rinse the yarn before moving it from the premordent pot to the dye bath, and I thought that was why the dye seemed so disappointing.  I suspect that my water isn't a pure as I'd like.  I'll probably have to get bottled water to get more control of my results.

I already have a couple baskets worth of yarn in the freezer for future dyeing!

I want to play a bit more with lupine, see what happens when I modify it with iron and copper solutions.  I can see this one making it into my final line of yarns.

Have you tried natural dyeing yet?  I'm fascinated with the chemistry behind it, and have been consuming all of the books I can on the matter.  Know of any good ones to recommend?

Yarn Dyeing with Onion Skins

Hey look, I dyed yarn with onion skins!  This is such an easy dyeing experiment and one that a lot of beginners use.  I probably should've started with this before indigo, but oh well!

I basically raided the new bag of onions plus all of the older skins that's been collecting at the bottom of our random veggie/fruit bowl for ages, weighed them out for giggles (25 g, btw), then dumped them in my new-to-me glass dye pot, topped it up in water, and simmered all the colour out of it...for hours.  Oops.

I used some undyed Mirasol Yarn Nuna that my LYS owner recced for dyeing.  It's this super soft merino wool/silk/bamboo, and I can't wait to use it up, it's so lovely to touch.  I scoured it with a few other skeins of yarn and did an alum mordent.

After the dye bath cooled, I added the yarn and warmed it up again to a simmer for a while (sorry, can't remember how long), then let it cool and sit overnight.  By the time I pulled it out of the water, the yarn had absorbed most of the colour!

I rinsed the yarn for a while before giving it a vinegar rinse.  After a final mild-soap bath, I pressed out the water and let it dye outside, with another dyed yarn I'll tell you about soon.  :)

And this was the result!  Orange isn't a colour I gravitate to, but I really love how it turned out.  I even know what I'm going to make with it!

Holla Knits is doing another KAL (several of them actually, but here's one that I'm joining), and I'm going to make up the Francisco Cowl by Allyson Dykhuizen!

One more note about the onion dye.  Look at how the 100% yarn I used to tie off the skein.  SO ORANGE.  I finally broke and bought a ton of undyed yarn from Knit Picks, and I'm really looking forward to experimenting with it.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*

Guys, I have a ton of posts to write and much less time to write them in now.  I'm not complaining though, since it's because I started a new job last week!  It's a temp position that'll go until the end of the year, but I like the work and, more importantly, it's a job.  Actually, two jobs, because I just found out that I got the distance ed teaching position I applied for at my undergrad university!  WOOHOO.

I'll try to get these posts out soon, because I have something exciting coming up for you all real soon!

Dyeing Yarn with Black Beans

So uh, definitely enjoying the natural dyeing!  I read a few blogs where they'd managed to get blue (apparently a more difficult colour to get with natural dyes) using black beans.  Obviously I had to try!  I dumped a bunch of beans (about 4 cups?) in a bowl with enough water to cover the beans by about 2 inches, then left them alone to steep for 12 hours, stirring often.  It was interesting to watch the liquid change - first turning a light blue, then a deep shade of blue/purple, and eventually almost a deep green-blue.  As others have mentioned, the beans swell up a lot, so you have to make sure there's enough water in there.

After straining out the liquid, I left it alone for a couple of hours to let the finer particulates settle out, and then I gently scooped out the liquid into a jar.  Dumped my already scoured and alum mordented yarn into the jar, sealed it up, and left it alone for a while.

And then after 36-ish hours, the liquid seemed to swell a bit, because boy did it start to leak out of my not-so-sealed jar and now I have blue dye all over the open shelves and floor below where I stored it.  That's about when I decided to pulled the out the yarn.

It looked a lot darker when I pulled out the yarn, but a lot of the dye washed out.  It kept shedding dye until I gave it a vinegar bath, which seemed to halt the bleed.  And weirdly, turned the water purple.  I sort of want to play with this dye source some more and see what happens at different pHs.  This blogger got a gorgeous shade of blue GREEN with more acidic well water, which I suspect also had a healthy dose of iron oxide in it too.  (I hope that link works - it did as of yesterday, but it's giving me a hosting error right now).

I used a skein of undyed Earth Collection Nova, which is a 100% alpaca in DK weight.  The final result wound up being a gorgeous light shade of silvery blue. 

Obviously fibre plays a big roll in dye uptake, since the 100% wool yarn I used to tie off the skein turned a really appealing shade of dark blue.  I definitely want to use wool for this dye bath again!

Black beans...who knew!

Today was a Creative Day! (and apparently a cleaning day...ick)

I've had a very busy day today.  Besides thoroughly cleaning the snot out of the living room (not literally) and helping the Boyfriend with the rest of the house, I pulled out some yarn sitting in a natural dye pot for the last few days...

...tidied the sewing room and then messed it up again with a sewing project...

...added a pompom to a nearly finished hat (no photo)...

...and made some decent progress on a sock.

Pretty good day in my books!  Now lets see if I can get this heel turned before I hit the sack, eh?

Dyeing Yarn with Indigo

So uh, I might've found a new hobby.  Related hobby?  Let's go with that.  Remember a while back when I showed you what the owner of the Itsy Bitsy Yarn Store sent me home with?  Well, I decided that I wanted to try out yarn dyeing, but needed my hand held first.

So I bought her indigo dyeing kit (and a book, but that's for another day).  And had a lot of fun this weekend.  The method used in indigo dying is different than other natural dyes, but the info booklet that came with the kit walked you through it beautifully, and it was nice to have good results right off the hop.

Here's a series of pictures of my adventure this weekend:

After scouring the yarn (cleaning it). I was scared I'd have a tangled mess, but the loose knots held the skein together.

Indigo stock, resting for an hour in a warm bath.

Gently pouring the stock solution into the dye bath, trying to reduce bubbles as much as possible.  One of the chemicals added to both the stock and the bath is Thiourea Dioxide, which removes the oxygen from the water (and I think produces hydrogen sulphide, because boy does it reek of rotten eggs).  This is the only way that the indigo dye will bond with the fibre, so you have to make sure there's no added oxygen to the bath.

Dye bath, chilling out on my front step for an hour.

The dye bath itself is a yellow-green colour, but you can see where accidental air bubbles have oxidized the water blue.

Pulling out the yarn after it's first dip.  Hard to see, but it came out a light green shade at first. 

But this is where the magic happens, where exposure to oxygen turns it from green to blue!

Light blueish green...

...to blue!

And here it is after it's first dip.  It looks dark, but if I'd rinsed it and let it dry, it'd be a lot lighter.

Close up of the still-saturated bottom loop after the first dip.  I wanted a deeper blue, so put the yarn back into the bath for another 30 minutes. 

Here it is after it's second dip.  Deeper, and a gorgeous shade, but I wanted to try for something even darker, if possible.

And here's the yarn after it's 3rd dip.  It's hard to tell in these photos, but you could just see the dye sinking deeper into the yarn with ever dip, and I knew it'd stay this deep after rinsing this time.

Here's a comparison, sort of a before and after photo.  The yarn on the right is the same shade that I started off with before dyeing.

I am seriously in love with the results.  Don't know yet what I'm going to knit it into, but I'm sure I'll find something.  The whole process was labour intensive, but so much fun, and I want to experiment more.  There's so many plants around - even in my back yard - that I could use, and I want to try it all! 

Because of course I need more yarn.  And another hobby.  :)

Have you tried your hand at dyeing, and specifically natural dyeing?  Willing to try out indigo dyeing after seeing my stunning results?