Dyeing with avocado and ivy berries

Don’t ivy berries come in such a stunning range of colours? I can imagine a beautiful winter hat in a variegated yarn using these tones. Until I went out to pick this pretty lot I never realised how different plants can have such distinctive colours.  A useful reminder to look closer when out and about. You never know what beautiful things you’re missing!

A few weeks ago I did a bit more natural dyeing using the mini skeins I prepared at the beginning of December. I loved the colours I achieved with avocado stones when I made my naturally dyed jumper so that was an obvious one to try again.

The mordanted skeins gave a lovely dusky pink colour while the unmordanted skeins were slightly duller.

Using the ivy berries, the dye liquid was a rich reddish purple colour. Disappointingly, but not entirely unexpectedly having seen the results others got with ivy berries, the mordanted skeins were a dull-ish sage green. The unmordanted skeins were almost a dove grey. 

Photos of both sets of skeins are below (the colours were quite difficult to capture accurately).From left to right: Unmordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted alpaca/wool, unmordanted wool, mordanted wool.

From left to right: Unmordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted alpaca/wool, unmordanted wool, mordanted wool.

Dyeing part 3!

The last 4 colours for my jumper project… light green, blue-green, pink and purple.

For the light green yarn, I soaked 300g black turtle beans in 700 mL water for 6 hours then poured off the juice and added the damp nettle dyed yarn. This was soaked for 1 hour then rinsed and dried giving a lovely grass green yarn, dotted with those nasty black patches!

Once I removed the nettle yarn, I added a skein of undyed mordanted yarn to the bean juice dye bath. I added another 700 mL water to the beans and soaked them for another 6 hours to extract more colour and added this to the dye bath before adding another skein of yarn – these would become my blue-green and purple skeins. The fresh bean juice was noticeably bluer than the older liquid which had turned a more green colour. After soaking overnight, there was a clear difference in the colours of the two skeins (below). The first skein added (RHS) had taken up a more green colour than the second skein added with the fresh juice (LHS). The plan was to over dye one of the blue skeins with avocado to achieve a purple and the other with eucalyptus to achieve blue-green.

To dye with the avocado liquid that had been soaking in water and ammonia for several days, I first simmered the dye liquid with the chopped stones in for 10 minutes or so. After sieving the stones out, I simmered a small sample of mordanted yarn for 10 minutes. This came out a beautiful pale pink so I added the full skein. After simmering for about 45 minutes, I rinsed and dried the skein which was a lovely dusky rose colour.

To get a purple colour I chose the bluest skein from the black bean liquid and rinsed and added it to the avocado dye bath and simmered it for 20 minutes. It came out a sort-of dirty pink so I put it back in the black bean bath for a while until it looked purpler. Much the same treatment was given to the other skein from the bean juice bath except that eucalyptus was used to over dye it before another spell in the bean juice to re-blueify it.

Very unscientific!

The results are shown below:

1. Nettle, alum mordant, over dyed with black bean

2. Black bean, alum mordant, 15 h, old juice

3. Black bean, alum mordant, 10 h, fresh juice

4. Avocado, alum mordant, 10 mins

5. Avocado, alum mordant, 45 mins

6. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with avocado

7. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with avocado, then black bean

8. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with eucalyptus, then black bean

Here’s a look at the finished skeins! Although the blue-green and purple yarns did not give as vibrant a colour as I would have liked, they are distinct and subtly beautiful colours so I’mm happy with what I’ve got. If I were to repeat the attempt I think that I would dye yellow or pink first then over dye with the black bean as the blue doesn’t appear to survive the simmering process terribly well. Well, that’s the beauty of natural dyeing I suppose! You can never be sure how it’ll work out!

And finally a look at all the beautiful colours ready for me to begin knitting! I love this picture a ridiculous amount!