Dyeing Yarn with Goldenrod

This is a blog post I started last year, when I was in a yarn dyeing frenzy.  It sat as a draft with pictures for months and months... But last week I dyed with Goldenrod again (but forgot to take pictures) so I thought this would be a fitting post.  I have talked about yarn dyeing a few times on the blog, including this post with a more detailed description of the process.

Goldenrod is a wildflower (or weed, depending on who you ask) that grows in empty lots, along highways, and pretty much everywhere in Ohio in the late summer and early fall.  Last year a coworker filled a trashbag for me with the Goldenrod plants growing in his backyard.  This year I was able to scavenge some from an empty lot down by the railroad tracks.  Last year I used the flower, stems, and leaves to make the dye bath, but you can also get nearly the same color from just the flower heads.

I simmered the plant for about an hour before straining out the plant material.  I bought a big mesh ladle thing from the Chinese grocery store and it works great for this!  Meanwhile, I prepared my yarn by mordanting it in a solution of alum.  The yarn came out a beautiful, bright yellow.

I made a TON of dye that day, so I also dyed two additional skeins of yarn and treated them with an iron afterbath.  To get the iron solution I soaked a bunch of rusty nails and other metal bits in a jar with water and vinegar. Then I put the solution in a pot and heated it to almost a boil.  One skein I dipped from the dye bath into the iron bath for about 20-30 seconds (the color changes right before your eyes, it is amazing.)  That one came out a lovely light green.  The next skein I put into the iron bath for longer, probably 1-2 minutes, and it came out a dark forest green.

Dyeing Yarn with Queen Anne's Lace

 

Another one of my natural dye experiments this summer was with Queen Anne's Lace.  In the summertime Queen Anne's Lace is a wildflower that flourishes in empty lots, along highways, and any other green space that does not get mowed.  These flowers remind me of spending summer "up north" at my grandparent's cottage as a kid.  They grew everywhere and where my favorite flowers to pick.  Now that I am making natural dyes, I knew I had to use Queen Anne's Lace somehow.

 

 

I started by going down to the railroad tracks one August day and cutting giant handfuls of Queen Anne's Lace like I was making a bouquet.  I needed at least 4 oz. of flowers to dye one skein of yarn.  Then I went through the cooking process, strained off the flowers, and dyed 3.5 oz. of wool mordanted in alum.  (You can read more about the dyeing process on my these previous posts.)

 

So far this has been my favorite dye as far as aroma.  Since Queen Anne's Lace is in the carrot family, it has a kind of spicy carrot scent while cooking.  The final product ended up being a light, bright yellow.  Stay tuned for more posts about ecodyeing!  I've dyed about 30 skeins of yarn this summer and fall, and now that the weather is cooler I'm catching up on my blogging.

 

Dyeing Yarn with Blueberries

Another one of my natural dye experiments was dyeing yarn with blueberries.  I started with a skein of 100% wool yarn and pre-mordanted the fiber in Alum.  Mordant helps the yarn to accept color better, and Alum tends to provide the brightest and clearest colors, compared to using copper or iron as mordants.

 

I made the dye bath using a 1:1 ratio of berries to fiber.  In this case, the blueberries had been left behind in the fridge at work and had started to get wrinkly and soft.  Instead of throwing them in the compost, I took them home for dyeing.  To get the maximum amount of color from the berries, I added a small amount of water to the pot and crushed the berries with a potato masher.  (I did this without the water at first and ended up squirting berry juice everywhere...)

 

 

After keeping just below a simmer for an hour, I strained out the berry pieces and added the wet fiber.  The dye bath looked like a gorgeous pink/purple, and I was really hoping that would transfer to the fibers.  When the fiber was rinsed and dryed, it ended up looking more like a blue-ish lavender.  It is still a lovely color, but definitely shows how unpredictable natural dyeing can be.

 

Dyeing Yarn with Zinnias

As I mentioned in a previous post, my interest in natural dyeing has been renewed.  I have kind of gone crazy with dyeing yarn (which you will see in my next five... or ten... blog posts) starting with zinnia flowers from the garden.

I started out by weighing the flowers and getting a 2:1 ratio of flowers to fiber.  My skeins are 3.5 oz, and I also dyed a small amount of wool for spinning, so I used about 8 oz of zinnias.  Then  I simmered the flowers in my dye pot for about an hour to extract the color, and strained out the flower pieces so it doesn't tangle with the yarn.

 

The yarn is 100% wool, pre-mordanted in alum so it will accept the color better and be more light-fast.  Before adding the wool to the dye bath, I soaked it in water so it will dye more evenly.  After an hour or so in the hot dye bath, I removed the yarn, let it cool, and rinsed out the remaining dye.  The zinnia dye turned out to be a gorgeous buttery yellow, much more subdued than the turmeric.

Processing Raw Wool

Most of my friends and blog readers know that I am an avid crafter and artist.  (If you haven't figured that out by now, you really haven't been paying attention...)  I have been crocheting and knitting for many years, and last year my friend Mary taught me how to spin yarn.  Spinning is something that got put on the back burner with all the other things going on in my life, but recently I've had a renewed interest in spinning and natural dyeing.

Part of what fueled my renewed excitement for spinning is this large trash bag full of raw wool!  I made friends with a woman named Diane that had come to Cleveland to take workshops at the Morgan Conservatory where I work.  She has a flock of sheep and three herding dogs.  (I have not seen any of her sheep but I met her dogs, they are adorable and very well behaved.)  On her second visit to Cleveland, she brought me a bag of raw wool from her Leicester sheep, half white wool and half black.  Now that I have the raw materials there is no excuse not to spin!

Before I could start spinning, I had to learn about processing raw wool.  Raw wool has a combination of dirt, grass, and lanolin embedded in the fibers.  Lanolin is a waxy substance secreted by sheep to help protect their skin.  Lanolin helps make the wool waterproof, but it also feels oily and is more difficult to work with than clean wool.  To clean the wool I filled a bucket with very hot water, added several squirts of dawn dish soap, and let a bunch of wool sink into the water.  It is necessary to use very hot water so the lanolin can melt out of the wool and get absorbed by the dish soap.  Once the wool is in the water, don't touch it.  Heat and agitation together will felt the wool into a blob.  After 15-20 minutes, remove the wool from the bucket, pour out the dirty water, and start again.  I soaked the wool 2-3 times in hot soapy water and 2-3 times in clean hot water to remove the soap.

Once the wool is clean, use a towel to gently squeeze out excess water.  Don't wring out the wool or it will turn into a blob.  I spread my clean wool out on a folding drying rack with a mesh top so air can get above and below, and help it dry faster.  If that is not available, a towel on the floor will work fine.  After the wool is dry, there are still a few pieces of grass and dirt tangled in the fibers, and a little bit of lanolin holding the ends of each lock together.  To help clean and detangle the fiber I purchased a set of hand carders.  The hand carders basically brush the wool and loosen the fibers so the remaining dirt particles can fall out.  After carding, I remove the wool and roll it into a cylindrical thing called a rolag.  These rolags can be used to draft the fibers for spinning.

So there you go!  That is how I got from a bag of raw wool to being ready to spin.  I have cleaned 3-4 buckets of white fiber, 2 of black fiber, and I have only made a dent in the amount of fiber left to clean.  Needless to say, this will keep me spinning through the whole fall and winter.  I have enjoyed using the clean wool in my natural dye experiments.  Pretty soon I will have my own hand dyed and hand spun yarn.