Today I am telling you about our first time of yarn dyeing. We read so much about dyeing and cause we love love love some beautiful yarn – why not try ourselves?
But which of the many different ways are we going to test? Sarah did a lot (and to be honest most of) the research on this and we decided to go for the natural way. Why? Because we like to be vigilant of our environment and what touches our or other peoples skins while wearing.
So natural it is gonna be. But what colours? And what do we need and most importantly: Where do we get it?
First one was easy – beetroot for a nice red. At least so we thought.
Second one is freshly mown grass -directily from my little garden. About this I was very curious cause I couldn´t find anything about the colour this would produce.
As dyeing with natural material takes a lot more time than other ways we made preparations before meeting together. Sarah prepared the wool in mordant and I prepared the brew.
And if you imagend that cooking grass would smell nice: You are so so wrong!
The brew is ready!
With everything prepared we met on a lovely saturday (we enjoyed the sun during the waiting periods!) and got started right away:
watering the wool 
Rootbeet brew 
grass brew 
and here it goes!
And then we had to wait while the wool was cooking. And then waiting to let it cool dowe to avoid felting. Sooo much waiting!
But then finally it was time to wash and hang the wool to dry!
grass 
rootbeet
Here they are – really not the colours we did expect. Seems we had too litte acid for the rootbeet, the next try of Sarah turned out much redder.
But nonetheless we are proud of our first try and the colours fit together really well don’t you think?
I am still not sure what to do with my part of these skeins – but for now i love to look at them and remeber a wonderful day creating them.
What are your experiences with dyeing? Anything you can recommend as a “must-do”? We would love to hear from you!
Love, Katharina
Female Fiber Knights 