Color

Here they are: the same yarn you saw here, plus a little extra, after many hours in the dyepot. We learned how to use natural dyes: two kinds of wood (one from Brazil, one that grows wild in my parents' backyard), black walnut shells, and red and yellow onion skins. To make natural dye stick properly to protein fibers, you need to add a mordant, which is generally a mineral salt. We used alum, copper sulfate, and iron sulfate; there are other options but they're much more toxic. Different mordants give very different results, as you can see here. All yarns are Corriedale cross, spun woolen, except for the Brazilwood/alum which is worsted-spun merino, and the Brazilwood/iron which is spindle-spun. That worsted merino is the best of the lot; lovely color, smooth but squishy yarn, I wish I had another thousand yards of it.

From the top, each dyestuff in three mordants: alum, copper, iron. Top: Black walnut shells. Brazil wood. Bottom: Onion skins. Osage orange wood.

We also tried something different: we took part of a washed gray fleece, put it in a big tub with hot water and vinegar, and sprinkled WashFast Acid Dyes in various shades of blue all over it. This was the result. It's still drying, since it takes longer for the fleece locks to dry out than the yarns. When it's dry I'll just fluff it up a little and spin it, rather than carding or combing it first, so the colors don't blend too much.

Quite honestly, I expected dyeing to be interesting, but maybe not my newest hobby. I was so wrong. The prospect of being able to dye yarn into just the colors I want, with just the amount of color variation or the exact combination I'm looking for, is really terrific. I had no idea acid dyes were so easy to use. The only thing stopping me now is time (entirely occupied with spinning, carding, and knitting, oh, and my day job), money (need to pick up some saucepans to use for dye, not to mention the dye itself), and the prospect of making the entire kitchen smell like boiling vinegar. Still, it's pretty much guaranteed that there's going to be sock-yarn dyeing around here at some point soon.

Oh, and you're probably wondering, what the heck am I going to do with all this new yarn? I'm thinking that the small amounts and the complementary colors will look really nice knit into a sideways-striping garter-stitch scarf. But first I just have to sit and admire my yarn for a while.