The Final Post
Two different batches of cochineal dyeing resulted in a number of skeins – about 7 – in different shades, from pale to dark. All are gorgeous, and work together harmoniously. Thing is, what to knit up?? That is a lot of pink and rose!
What really amazes me is the amount of color I got out of a few grams of bugs. Van Stralen’s recipe was really simple, and the percentage method in metric was a piece of pie. Pushing the colors in different directions came from the final rinse in either ammonia or vinegar, with ammonia pushing more toward the blues and the vinegar more toward the yellows – or colder and warmer, to make it simple.
I let the skeins air-dry for a few days, and then pulled apart the outer yarn from that of the inner. Initially, there was some difference, but in the intervening weeks, the color seems to have evened out throughout the skeins. I expect, though, that any irregularities in the dyeing will show up when the yarn is knitted up.
Here are all the skeins in a row. The one on the very far left is a skein of this in a commercially dyed color. The remaining seven are the ones pictured above.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 