My weapons of choice
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
In this vein of inspiration, I wanted to experiment more earthy colours, something more Fall. I wanted to make a stripy yarn involving a gradient of burgundy and soily brown. I thought about tea and wine. Both are well known to stain clothes when we spill it, it should work! Or so, I thought.
Setup - before
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
I managed a more friendly setup, involving bowls in the microwave and my preparation, lots of it. I brewed a good number of Tetley's orange pekoe tea-bags in a big container, opened the wine bottles and started to distribute the pigments in the designated bowls. And I heated. And I heated. And... well you know the rest!
Setup - after
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
No fading in color from the solutions in which the yarn was dipping in. The yarn though seemed to get darker, but no actual soaking of pigments inside the fibers, as dramatically seen with Kool-Aid (with the end result leaving something like sweet water!)
Rinsing the yarn got rid of a lot of the color, as it was not really attached to the fibers. Another difference with Kool-Aid.
Ta da! Or not...
It resulted in this:
Beigey
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
Not quite what I had in mind. After seeing this result, I read ejchang's links about natural dyeing and understood a bit better what it rather failed. Not mordant. For some reasons, Kool-Aid sticks well.
Take 2!!! or How I didn't say my last word
I decided to reuse that yarn (hey it is certainly not lost!!) to do the colours I wanted to obtain in the first place, but using Kool-Aid this time. If you have the primary colours, you can do anything, from what I learned during my art classes in high school (I didn't do 4 years of them for nothing!!). Let's do this!
Reddishes
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
As for burgundy, I made a mix of cherry with a tad of grape to darken the colour. And, for the brown, I chose a base of Orange Tang (you know that thing we wouldn't drink, but is apparently useful to unclog pipes...), lots of grape Kool-Aid and a touch of cherry.
Pigments source
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
To obtain colours that satisfied me required a tad of tweaking with the powders, but it can only be good because you make concentrated solutions that way. :-)
TA DA! Here it is! I show you "Autumn"!!
Autumn
Originally uploaded by diluvienne.
I like how the colours aren't uniform. I can't wait to see how this baby will stripe, as I manage to make thinner stripes than my Blue Frost yarn.
Ok, no more dyeing until I can know (and show) what I've done so far looks like. And I got far too many projects right now, I should remain concentrated! More knitting postings later!
1 comment:
your new yarn looks beautiful. just in time for autumn, i agree.
yeah, food/plant dyes have a hard time sticking to the yarn w/o help of a mordant (which is why we can wash them out relatively easy). as for kool-aid i think it's a different chemical composition and definitely not natural made. it certainly does make yarn smell nice though :)
have you tried experimenting with food coloring? some people have had success with it (along with a dash of white vinegar to "set" the dye).
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