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.

FO: Naturally dyed jumper project

It’s done! And surprisingly quickly. I’m incredibly pleased with how it’s turned out and the fit. I knit almost a straight Men’s medium, as I tend to prefer a mens fit in jumpers with the extra length in the body and arms. I increased for the sleeves using the women’s large size grading though as I thought I probably wouldn’t need as much of an increase as the men’s size allowed for.

We wet nout for a walk today and I had hoped to get some decent pictures, but in reality although a lovely  day the sun was a bit too low and bright to get good photos. The body was a bit narrower than I had expected but overall the fit is very good. At the moment it is unblocked and I’m looking forward to seeing how much of a difference that might make as I’m a blocking novice really and have certainly never blocked anything this big!

Here’s a close-up of the yoke section and of the inside – so proud of how neat it looks.

 

I’m already planning my next jumper now!

Dyeing with onion skins

 

A bit of test dyeing with onions skins earlier this week. I love the colours you get from onion skins, so intense and autumnal and with very little effort required. What could be easier than just simmering some skins in water for 30 minutes then scooping them out and dunking yarn into the resulting bright orange broth?

Here I dyed 3 different yarns, a silk/baby alpaca 4-ply, a wool/alpaca dk and a 100% wool dk. The first and last of these I had in 100g balls and the wool/alpaca dk only in a 50g ball. I divided these all up into mini skeins of about 8g each (6 skeins per 50g) which would allow me to test 6 different dye stuffs. For the silk/baby alpaca and 100% wool I had one skein mordanted with alum and one unmordanted to compare the colours obtained. I marked the unmordanted skeins with a bit of green acrylic yarn so I could identify them! You can see in the photo below that the mordanted skeins (rhs) slightly yellowed in the mordanting process.The results of the onion skin experiment are shown below. The unmordanted skeins were a darker and duller shade of orange with a less yellow tone than the mordanted skeins.

And a look at the finished mini skeins:   From left to right: Unmordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted alpaca/wool, unmordanted wool, mordanted wool.

I will be doing some more small test dyeing batches in the next few weeks with the same yarns, so exciting!

Lichen dyes: An update

It’s over a month now since I prepared some lichen fermentation jars to try to extract the colour from some likely looking lichens.

First off, oak moss. I didn’t have much hopes of colour from this but thought I’d try anyway since it’s such an abundant lichen. This was fermented the “traditional” way and to begin with it smelled pretty terrible! After a few weeks though the liquid had begun to turn a rich brown colour and it started to smell pleasant and woodsy when I opened the jarIn contrast the yellow lichen, also in a “traditional” fementation jar did not show any improvement in smell or colour over the month.

Equally, in the ammonia fermentation jar, the yellow lichen, although giving a good red when tested with bleach has not given a strong colour to the liquid yet. I’ll wait and see if there is any improvement.

The grey wall lichen has given a rich red colour to the ammonia fermentation liquid, although it’s difficult to see in the photograph. It will be interesting to see what I get from dyeing with this one.

Finally, another lichen that I have simply soaked in water has given a tawny brown colour and I’d like to have a go at dyeing with it as well.

I’ve got an assortment of yarns to test dye with these samples in the next few weeks or so so watch this space!

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!

First dyeing results!

After sitting in the dye for 6 days, the colours I obtained from the oak galls and black beans are revealed!

From top:

1. Oak galls, no mordant

2. Oak galls, no mordant, iron modifier

3. Black turtle beans, alum mordant

4. Black turtle beans, acidic modifier

For my jumper project, I was aiming for a dark grey/brown for the main colour using an iron modifying solution on the oak gall dyed skeins. Unfortunately, I did not have enough of the iron solution and adding more to the bath with the yarn afterwards resulted in a patchy colouring. I’ve decided that I quite like the effect though so we’ll see how it looks once it’s knitted up!

For the blue skein, I decided that the colour of the skein straight from the dye vat was rather more greeny than I wanted. I had read somewhere that the colour could be modified to give a more purple blue by a vinegar bath so I added 4 tsp vinegar to a tub of water and added the rinsed skein. No immediate colour change was seen but after a while, it was clear that there was a slight improvement.

Hopefully the weather will improve and I’ll be able to get decent photos of how the actual skeins have turned out!

I’ve tried a few more dye materials today and will post about those results soon!

Dyeing some yarn

The first natural dye I wanted to test was black beans, which can apparently give a rather nice blue. I soaked the beans in 2 lots of 350 mL water first for about 6 hours then overnight. The combined purple liquid was kept in a jar and after the skeins had been mordanted, I put one small skein in the jar and will leave it for a couple of days for the colour to be absorbed… we’ll see what happens!

For the main jumper colour I transfered the galls I had been soaking into a large aluminium pot and simmered for 1 hour. I strained the liquid through a cloth bag and poured the dye liquid back into the clean pot. I was a beautiful rich dark brown now.

I soaked the unmordanted skeins of wool for a couple of hours and then squeezed out the excess water and added them directly to the bath. I simmered the wool in the bath for 1 hour and will leave the wool in the bath for a couple of days to absorb as much colour as possible.

Finally I got round to buying some ammonia to make a comparative lichen fermentation. On Sunday I found another lichen that tested positive for orchil acids with bleach growing on the walls of the church and managed to scrape off a small amount to make a test dye.

I now have both the yellow lichen and the grey wall lichen in jars with 1 part water, 2 parts ammonia. Already the colour looks better than the “traditional” fermentation jars.

My first dyes?

Orchil testing of yellow lichens (probably Xanthoria parietina) with a drop of bleach. The red colour that develops indicates the presence of orchil acids that mean that the lichen can provide a red/purple dyes. Crushed oak galls soaking in water. I hope to obtain a dark black/brown with these and an iron modifier to give the main colour for my jumper.Jars of lichen fermenting the *ahem* “traditional” way. I also intend to get some ammonia to comapre the more modern method for extracting the orchil dyes from the lichen. In the right hand jar is the yellow lichen that tested positive for orchils with the bleach test and in the right hand jar is oak moss lichen which didn’t test positive but I have read some reports of it being used this way so I’m giving it a go!

2 jars of fungi and one of lichens soaking in water. It will be interesting to see if any interesting colours ensue!

The first pizza!

The most massive fire so far, a few cracks and pizza!