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...