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...
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