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! 

More dyeing

The jumper pattern I’ve chosen, the Afmaeli- 20 year anniversary sweater by Istex uses 9 different colours of yarn. I hope to reproduce this range using only natural dyes that are readily available to me without having to buy special dyestuffs.

So far my experiments have yielded 5 different colours. I described how I obtained the major brown colour and a blue yesterday and here are yesterdays successes (the colours aren’t quite right in the photograph):

1. Onion skins, alum mordant

2. Old tea, alum mordant

3. Eucalyptus leaves and twigs, alum mordant

4. Nettle tops, alum mordant

I’m very happy with the vivid orange that the onion skins gave, I used quite a high proportion of onion skins to yarn and there was still quite a bit of colour left in the bath although it was noticeably paler after the yarn was removed.

The tea dyed yarn gives the secondary colour for the jumper which is used around the cuffs, hem and neckline. I saved up the cold dregs from the teapot every time a new pot was made for about a week and had about 2.5 L in total.  I wanted a very pale beige colour  which I obtained by simmering the yarn in old tea until it was the desired colour.

I did not know what colour the eucalyptus would give and have seen reports of it giving anything from pinks and browns to bright greens. Since we have a tree in the garden though I picked a small branch and simmered the leaves and small twigs up to see what colour would result. I added a small piece of mordanted yarn to the pot to see what colour it would take up and since it came out a bright yellow I strained off the vegetable matter and added my skein.

The nettle dye was a bit last minute since ma came home with a bunch of nettles for me to try. I simmered them but the water only became a pale yellow colour. I decided to add the yarn while the nettles were still in the bath and simmer them together. After 30 mins, the yellow colour was still quite pale so I left the skein to cool in the bath overnight. When I took it out though there were black patches where the nettle had been in direct contact with the yarn. I will try to use this skein, overdyed with blue from beans to get a green colour since I already have a good yellow.

Here is a look at the skeins I have finished so far. The bottom skein is the eucalyptus and looks more yellow irl.

The remaining colours I hope to obtain are light green, blue-green, pink and purple. For the pink I have started preparing an avocado dye bath by soaking chopped avocado stones in water with 2 tsp ammonia added. I’ve read that a high pH is needed for best extraction of the colour from the avos. After just 24 hours of soaking it’s already a deep red colour! I hope that by overdyeing the pink with black bean juice I can get a decent purple.

For the light green I will overdye the nettle dyed yarn with black bean juice and for the blue-green I will dye a skein with black bean juice and  then overdye with a yellow – possibly eucalyptus.

Nearly there! I will be knitting my tension square today – for the first time ever! I’m determined to do this properly!