Thursday, October 6, 2011

Yarn Dye - Success!

Hi all,
This past weekend my #2 daughter and I dyed some yarn.  It was our first foray into this and we used Pokeberry a noxious weed as our coloring agent.  We went out around our property and collected two five gallon pails of berries.  Then with gloved hands we pulled the berries and put them in our pot.
We chose pokeberry because we could use vinegar as our mordant and we didn't need to use or buy any metal mixtures for our mordant.  We used the recipe from the book I referred to in a previous blog and which I can't recall the title of at the moment.

It was an afternoon to evening project but was very fun and exciting.  Here are our results:

this is the yarn - it started brown and became this gorgeous color.  Planning to knit a shawl with it.

2 comments:

Ellen said...

The pokeberry color is so lovely. I really admire you guys who take the time to spin and dye.
I am still just a LYS kinda gal and haven't taken this step yet.
I guess I'm a little intimidated, too.
Cheers,
Ellen
http://blog.timesunion.com/fiberarts

Kate said...

Thank you Ellen! It was very simple and a fun project. I hope to do more with other natural coloring agents.