Solar dyeing - a long overdue update...

Back in early June I started my first ever Solar Dye project. I just noticed that I never posted an update when the experiment was finished.

Anyway - I left the yarns in the jars with the rhododendron flowers for about four weeks. Weather in June was fairly unsteady (and has been like that throughout July, too), but we did see a couple of really sunny, warm days. 

Differences between the jars had become apparent quite early on, with the wool based yarns clearly taking on some colour, while the cotton yarn seemed to stay quite pale, although the water in the jar soon turned purple. 

One day before I ended the dye process, this is what the jars looked like (from left to right: wool, cotton, wool/silk/ramie):

On the 29th of June, I released the yarn from the jars, rinsed it thoroughly, and hung it to dry (left to right: wool, wool / silk / ramie, cotton).

As expected, the cotton yarn had hardly taken on any colour - it looked a very pale green. The difference between the wool and the wool/silk/ramie blend was quite interesting to see - while the wool clearly favoured green and yellow tones, there seemed to be some purple in the mixed fibres yarn. I was curious to see what the end result would be after drying.

And here it is - as you can see, the cotton yarn hardly held any of the colour at all - I will overdye it with a more potent dye that sticks better to cotton:

The wool retained the greenish-yellow tones. I am really happy with the tonal variegation in this hank - it came out quite beautiful. 

The wool / silk / ramie yarn has become a beauty in its own right. While purple pretty much greyed out in drying, the silky sheen of the yarn gives the remaing tan and yellow tones an almost metallic look. Again - love the variegation!

So will there be more solar dyeing going on on my balcony this summer? Yes, definitely... in fact. there are three jars out there already! But more of this later...

Yes... I do still knit...

... and it is still my go-to craft while sitting and watching TV (I can't just sit and watch... my hands need to do something...). I just tend to forget to write about it. This time, though... well, it just feels right to give it some space here, because it is really an update on my little black bean experiment.

I have knit a cowl from my bean dyed yarn, and I love it! The pattern is Gris de lin by Berangere Cailliau.

I'm almost a bit sad that it's summer now and well... generally a bit too warm to wear a cowl. I did put it on for a quick picture, though.

I've got just under half a cake (about 45 g) of yarn left over... I'm thinking matching wristwarmers...

Roselle Dyeing - Update

Right after my first attempt at dyeing with roselle flowers I said I wanted to try dye the same yarns again, but in reverse order, to get a considerably darker wool yarn, and a considerably lighter coloured wool / silk / ramie yarn...
Well, I used the same recipe again... and reversed the order in which I dyed the yarns. So this time - the 100 % wool went into the first dye bath, and then the blend.

And here are the results - a bit of a surprise again, but see for yourself - the pictures show the hanks from both attempts next to each other.

Wool:
The hank dyed in the first dye bath of the second attempt (top / left) did turn out darker - but not quite as dark as I had expected,

Wool / Silk / Ramie:
The hank that I dyed in the second bath of the second attempt (bottom / right) came out much darker than I had expected - but this time, it retained more of a red tinge after rinsing. It's a very pretty colour actually.

Third dye bath, anyone?

I mentioned that the book on plant dyes that I followed for the recipe said a second dye bath wasn't possible? Uhm... the liquid in the dye pot still looked very red after that second dye bath... so, hey! Why not try a third one... there's no harm in trying, right? 

I found a 100g braid of undyed Finnish woll top in my stash and divided it into 5 samples. Put them all in the dye pot (dye temperature around 70° C) and took one out every 20 minutes. I'm now looking forward to spinning up this subtle pink gradient:

Uhm... that last sample on the right is close to the colour I was expecting in the first place... being a fair match to the picture in the book.

Ugh... but Mama - that yarn smells like old beans...

Ever since I read about dyeing yarn with black beans I knew I had to try it out. Not only was I keen to dye blue yarn - it also seemed to go very well with a certain love of Tex Mex cuisine my daughters have developed over the past couple of months... why not make a black bean dip from scratch next time? 

So I bought a bag of black beans, and basically followed these instructions on fibreartsy.com to make the bean dye. 

I set to work the day before chicken fajitas were on the family menu again... I put the beans in a big pot, added a fair amount of water, and let them soak for the next 24+ hours. Then I drained the remaining fluid into a large jar, making sure there were no solids left in the dye. The freshly drained fluid is not blue, by the way... it was more of a muddy purple with a hint of dark red. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before I added the yarn to the jar (definitely have to do that next time) - and as soon as I added the yarn, a colour shift towards blue started to set in. By the time I had found my tablet, the colour had already changed considerably.

The yarn that I had picked out to dye was a fingering weight merino tweed yarn, which was a light grey to start with. The yarn was mordanted in a cold mordanting process using an aluminium formate based mordant. 

I left the yarn in the jar for just over a full day. The jar looked really promising...

... and my 7 yo daughter and I decided to take the yarn out of the jar. Her first reaction? "Ooh! Pretty!" Her second reaction... "Ugh... but Mama - that yarn smells like old beans!" Uhm - yes... it did... after all, it had been soaking in bean water for a day... a SUNNY day. Rinsing and a gentle wash with wool detergent took care of the smell, of course - and the end result after drying is a really pretty tonal blue yarn.

The black bean dip was really good, too, btw. I am already looking into more black bean recipes... this recipe for brownies has me intrigued...

Surprise!

So... here's another chapter of "experiments with plant dyes and their surprising results". I'vementioned before that my girls have challenged me to dye pink yarn using plant dyes. So far, I have managed to dye a very light pink cotton cloth using a rose-lavender dye, and I still plan on using that recipe on cold mordanted cotton yarn soon enough... but for now... well...
I decided to try a different flower dye - I got my hands on a big bag of whole dried roselle (hibiscus sabdariffa) flowers (according to the label) - the stuff that is used to make hibiscus infusions. The dried flowers are a very dark red.

I was happy to find that one of my books on plant dyeing (Ebner/Hasenöhrl: Natürlich färben mit Pflanzen; also available in English: Natural Dyeing with Plants) has a recipe for dyeing wool or silk with roselle - recommends 200 % WoF dried flowers to produce a light pink colour on wool, or a more saturated dusty pink on silk.

The yarn that I chose to dye is a 100 g hank of a wool / silk / ramie (60 / 20 / 20) blend. I cold mordanted the yarn over the course of several days using an aluminium formate mordant. No cream of tartar was present in the mordant bath in the first place. I placed the mordanted yarn in a warm solution of cream of tartar for about an hour prior to dyeing - but wasn't sure whether this would have any effect.

Because I wanted to dye a 100g hank of yarn ,  I went with 200g of dried flowers. I soaked them for a good 8 hours, boiled them up in the evening, and let the dye cool down over night. In the morning I strained out the the plant matter and placed it in a fine mesh bag to be put back into the dye bath. Then I added the pre-mordanted yarn to the dye pot and slowly heated it up to just over 70°C. The yarn in the dyebath pretty much immediately seemed to take on a surprisingly dark red colour - oh well, I thought... guess most of the colour will disappear when I squeeze it out and rinse it.

I kept the dye at approx. that temperature for about half an hour, then let the yarn cool in the dye bath to just over 40 °C. I took it out and gave it a good squeeze. The yarn was still a dark red!

Rinsing did take out a lot of the red (probably because my last minute cream of tartar treatment did not really work), but I was left with a truly beautiful maroon colour (I think it's very close to actual rose wood)!

Now - my book says that a second dye from hibiscus doesn't really yield a decent result - but since the first dye came out so surprisingly dark, and the dye bath still looked quite saturated, I decided to just give it a try. I did still have a hank of 100% wool yarn in my cold mordanting bucket. I gave it a slightly modified cream of tartar treatment - heating it up to about 70 °C and letting it cool down again. So... did the second dye bath work? Well, it most certainly did! 

This was what I pulled out of the dye pot - bright pink! I unfortunately forgot to take a picture right after rinsing - again, some of the red washed out, but I must say the colour that stayed is much better - it's a beautiful dusty rose shade!

Here's a picture of the dried hanks:

Those colours look so beautiful together that I definitely have to repeat this experiment, this time to produce a 100 % wool hank in the darker shade, and a hank of the blend in the lighter shade. 

So, why exactly did I get that surprisingly dark shade? The truth is - I don't know! I guess I was lucky to find dried flowers that are produced in a way that retains the dye within the flowers particularly well. That's one of the things I have come to love about dyeing with plant material... it's full of surprises. 

Another experiment (in progress)... Solar Dyeing

Just over a week ago, I looked out of the kitchen window and saw... this:

The rhododendron in our back garden was in full bloom. What you can't really see here is the sole red rhododendron behind this wall of pinkish purple. I had planned to try out solar dyeing this year - so since the weather forecast looked fine for the next couple of days, I decided that now was the time.

I chose 1 hank of 100% wool yarn and one hank of 100% cotton yarn that had been cold mordanted over the past couple of days.

My guess was... extrapolating from what I have learned from earlier flower dye experiments (e.g. the roses last month)...  that the wool would again take on yellow hues... with a bit of luck, I might see something on the verge of green from the pink/purple flowers? But maybe I could get some faint pink or purple on cotton?

First step was picking flowers... lots of them - I picked 100 g of pink/purple and 100g of red for every 100g of yarn that I wanted to dye, which - on the first day, amounted to 400g of flowers over all. My daughters helped me, and I am pleased to say that the bees did not seem to be bothered too much. They minded their business, we minded ours - there were obviously enough flowers for everyone. Warning though: You'll end up with really sticky fingers.

Then I started to assemble my dye jars. It really was fun to layer the flowers and the yarn in the jars - starting with the red flowers, then yarn, more red flowers, yarn,... ,at one point mixing red and pink flowers, yarn, mixed flowers, yarn... pink flowers, yarn... ending with pink flowers. The jars were rather full when I was done...

Anyway - fill them to the brim with water, put them in the direct sunlight to heat them up... and wait what happens...

First thing that happened: I decided to fill a third jar the next day... this one with a wool / silk / ramie blend...
Second thing that happened: After just one day, I noticed the first colour changes.

There was definitely some green up in the pink/purple section... and there seemed to be a pinkish purple shimmer down in the red section - but it was too early to say which colours the yarns would pink up.

Third thing that happened: The weather changed. Towards the second half of the week heavy clouds appeared and decided to stay - they gave us some rain, which is of course good for the dye plants I'm trying to grow on our balcony - but what's worse: temperatures dropped below 20 °C... and have stayed there ever since. I am putting the jars into the direct sunlight whenever the sun decides to make an appearance (usually towards the evening)... but this project seems to have turned from a solar dyeing experiment to a low temperature dyeing experiment. Oh well... guess it'll just take a bit longer...
Here are my jars after one week - still looking promising enough:

(Almost) Instant Gratification

One weekend in May I was so annoyed after spending the better part of the day doing school related work that I needed a quick dye project to lift my spirits. So I got out some yellow Easter egg dye tablets and some orange and red KoolAid to dye a skein of yarn and a braid of fibre. Now yellow, orange and light red are usually not my colours, but

1. that is in fact the reason why I have a good collection of yellow and orange dye tablets by now.

2. the same is true for orange and light red KoolAid (it's not available where I live - but some awesome ravelers that I had the pleasure to exchange swap packages with have been so kind as to send me some in the past... the blues, greens and darker shades usually get used up fairly quickly).

3. I had a feeling that I should dye something fiery.

I started out by dyeing both yarn and fibre a light yellow using Easter egg dyes. Then I put the yarn into a casserole dish and sprinkled it randomly with orange, and red KoolAid. Wrapped it in oven proof plastic wrap and popped into the oven at 90°C for about an hour. 

The braid stayed in the dye pot, just covered with wather and I added dissolved KoolAid in certain spots.

I was quite happy with the yarn after rinsing and drying - and my 7 yo immediately fell in love, with it, too.

The fibre braid on the other hand seemed to be missing something. The yellow splotches didn't work for me, and the rest was too bright overall for my taste. 

So it went back into the dye pot, and I added some cyan coloured Easter egg dye here and there in an attempt to cover up the yellow and mute the overall brightness ... which to a certain degree dispersed throughout the dyebath. 

The result is simply stunning! It reminds me of verdigris on copper - I truly love it, and can't wait to spin it up (once my wheel is clear of an older project that has been lingering there for far too long).