cochineal – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Saturday Dyeing

I spent all day Saturday dyeing yarn with indigo, cochineal, and quercitron (yellow oak bark). Judy came out from Ventura with three skeins of white yarn, one of which was 100% washable merino, another was merino and nylon, and another of merino and silk. Mine were all 100% wool, specifically the Crazy Eight yarn from Wool2Dye4. I gave Judy a skein of the Crazy Eight, so all told, we had 8 skeins of pure white wool for our projects. I also had two skeins of Sea Wool I had dyed using cochineal, one lighter than the other, and a skein of moorit Shetland which I had earlier dyed with quercitron.

Friday evening, I set out 15 g. of quercitron bark to soak overnight, as well as 10 g. of cochineal mixed 10 g. of tartaric acid. Saturday morning, once we got the first dye bath heating, we set up the indigo. After my earlier disaster with indigo, I decided to order a dye kit from Dharma Trading Company, in Berkeley, California. This is a very tidy little kit, well worth the small price – kind of like frozen vegetables in midwinter – a definitely good thing to have! The only thing I needed to buy was a container with a lid – this little kit produces 4 gallons of intensely blue dye, and we certainly did not make a dent in it. Putting the container – a commercial food storage unit – on a furniture dolly was a good thing to do, too, as that is a lot of weight to carry around.

Cochineal Skeins with Overdyed Skeins on Outside

We found out, very early, that the indigo in this vat is very strong. I dipped my two cochineal Sea Wool skeins in the vat once it was ready – and they turned deep blue violet after only a minute in the vat. Oops! I was aiming for lavender! You can see how dark the two cochineal skeins became, as well as the original shades of pink. We used this knowledge to good advantage later on, and diluted the strength of the indigo by taking a couple of cups and pouring it into water in another container. Much nicer! The lavender and greens Judy got were all done with a diluted indigo bath.

Judy's Lavender (Indigo Over Cochineal) and Green (Indigo Over Quercitron)

To get her lavenders and greens, Judy did two dye baths. The first was a purely yellow skein in the quercitron, and a purely pink skein in the cochineal. As her skeins had different fiber content in them, as well as had been treated to be washable, her colors were not as intense as the Crazy Eight yarn, which is a washable merino, but is made up of 4 2-ply strands plied together. Because of the silk in her yarn, all temperatures were carefully controlled not to exceed 180 F. – important to keep the luster of the silk, as well as to keep the yellow from drifting into drabber shades.

If you are unfamiliar with indigo dyeing, you might like to know that before you get the blue, it is green in the dye vat; the oxygen in the air creates the blue color. You can see that the large vat is green in color, with a bluish rim at the top. As a result, it is difficult to gauge how dark your indigo will become once exposed to the air. So, as I said, we diluted the indigo with more water. Then, to get the gradated yellow-into-green, and pink-into-lavender, Judy dipped only a part of her skein into the indigo, and slowly squeezed the dye into other areas of the skein once it was removed from the weaker solution. Doing this three or four times, she made some very nice space-dyed yarn.

For myself, I wanted to preserve most of my skeins as solid colors, and so chose to do one skein in pure quercitron, one in pure cochineal, and one in a medium indigo. My last white skein was tied off in the traditional flammegarn method. and dipped first in the cochineal, tied up some more, and then dipped in the indigo. The results were quite pleasing altogether. I was also quite pleased with the indigo-dyed moorit yarn – it took on a pleasantly greenish cast.

Left to Right: Tie-Dyed, Quercitron, Cochineal, Diluted Indigo

Saturday flew by! By and large, Judy and I were happy with our results. Judy had done a flammegarn in quercitron, cochineal, and indigo, but it was too pastel for her tastes. Rather frustrated, she dumped it into the undiluted indigo – and lost all here cochineal. However, the yarn came out really nice, despite that. In place of the yarn she didn’t like, she got one which is mulberry and teal, two of her favorite colors. The picture here is a bit too intense – the graduation between the purple and teal was far more subtle, with the teal being darker.

Our working concept was to use the lightest colors first, and then move to the darker ones. This meant yellow, then pink, then blue. I was not really pleased with the green we got using this method. Looking around, I see some people dye with indigo first, and then with a yellow overdye. I expect that the initial indigo has to be relatively pale to achieve middle greens. This is something I plan to do at a later date, and while greens are often readily available in other dye plants, the ones done with a combination of blue and yellow seem to be more vibrant. Color mixing is an art, and not knowing how something works best is frustrating, but at the same time so much fun. Since I am not a professional dyer, I am not too concerned about creating repeatable products, but I do like having control over my results a bit more. This is where a sense of adventure is important, as well as a willingness to try something. Theories often do not work with realities!

That said, here are the skeins, all hung up to dry a bit before getting dinner ready for the men.

Cochineal, iii

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.

8 g Cochineal, 4 g Tartaric Acid, Tin in Bath, Ammonia After Bath

4 g Cochineal, 2 g Tartaric Acid, Tin in Bath

Cochineal and Quercitron Exhaust - Ammonia After Bath

Cochineal and Quercitron Exhaust - Vinegar After Bath

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.

Commercially Dyed on Far Left - Seven to the Right are Cochineal

Cochineal, ii

I have spent the last few weekends dyeing with quercitron and cochineal. I did not devote just one day to each color, but did both each day. The quercitron adventures yielded golden yarns and flammegarn, as well as exhaust baths I used with the exhaust baths of the cochineal. For both, I premordanted the yarn with alum and tartaric acid as I wanted to move toward reds and pinks, rather than the red violet or burgundy colors derived from unmordanted wool. I used handspun moorit shetland and commercially spun yarn for the cochineal.

First Dye Day

A couple of weeks ago, when I did the flammegarn, I did my first-ever dyeing with cochineal. Using the recommendations from Trudy van Stralen’s Indigo, Madder & Marigold, I set up my dye bath the day before I planned to dye.

I ground up 5 g of cochineal, combining it with 2.5 g of tartaric acid, mixed them together, and let them soak overnight. The next day, as with the quercitron, I filtered out the bugs before starting the dye pot. Into this dye bath I put in 1 skein of commercially spun wool, weighing in at 50 g, and the handspun moorit, weighing in at 75 g. This was certainly more wool than the 10% cochineal / 5% tartaric acid weight van Stralen uses, but I wasn’t too worried. I wanted to see the results more than anything!

The wools were in the dye bath for 35 minutes (per van Stralen’s recipe). In the early minutes of immersion, the moorit and white took on orangish casts. These colors deepened the longer the yarn remained in the bath, moving closer toward red for the moorit, and pink for the white.

Moorit and White Wool - Before Tin Added to Bath

After 35 minutes, the yarn was removed, and 0.25% of yarn weight of tin added. Thus, 125 x 0.25% = .3125 g. I put in .3 according to my scale. Before adding the tin, the yarn was removed from the bath. The tin was weighed out in a bowl, water added, and then stirred into the dye pot. Tin is added to “bloom” colors toward the red side. Once done, the wools were returned to stew another five minutes, and removed. The moorit became a rather dull wine-red, and the white became a lovely pink color.

Pulling the wools out of the dye bath was a pleasant surprise. Each color was harmonious with the other, intense without being displeasing.

Moorit and White Wool Just Out of the Dye Bath

The next step was to immerse the skeins in ammoniated water, to further push the colors toward magenta. The pictures show fairly well the before and after colorations.

Moorit and White Wool After Dipping in Ammoniated Water

The wool pulled up most of the color in the dye bath, but left behind was a pale orange. Another skein of white wool was placed in the exhaust, heated for 45 minutes, and then removed. It had a pale orangish color, but when placed into the ammoniated water, it turned a lovely sea shell pink.

Wool Dyed in Exhaust Bath - Not Yet Dipped in Ammoniated Water

And you would think after all tihs activity I would be done, right? Nope! I had saved my filtered bugs and quercitron dregs, the quercitron dye bath, and the remainder of the exhausted cochineal. All these were warmed up together and yet another
white skein immersed . . . but you will have to wait to see all the final colors in another installment.

Cochineal, i

Cochineal is a dye native to the Americas, in use by indigenous peoples long before the Spanish came. Once discovered, it became a source of wealth for the conquistadors, and a well-kept secret. It replaced or supplemented many other natural red dyes, such as madder root, used throughout Europe and Asia. As with quercitron, Edward Bancroft wrote extensively about cochineal in his books about dyeing.

Cochineal is derived from bugs that grow on cactus plants. They are collected, dried, and then ground prior to use as a dye. Trudy van Stralen, in Indigo, Madder & Marigold, recommends grinding them up as fine as flour, using an old coffee grinder dedicated to that purpose. I have a molcajete, which I used. The result was very finely powdered bugs. An interesting odor arises when grinding them – rather sour – which is not something I expected. Also, the rather pale bugs release a deep red color. The molcajete was easily cleaned by running water into it while grinding with the pestle. It was then set aside to dry.

Indian Collecting Cochineal from a Cactus with a Deer Tail

Using van Stralen’s percentages, I used 10% of the fiber weight (here, 100 g) for the bugs, and 5% of that for the tartaric acid in the dye bath. Thus, 10 g of ground bugs were used with 5 g of tartaric acid. These were mixed together, and set aside to soak overnight in warm water.

As with the quercitron, I filtered the cochineal solution prior to placing it in the dye pot. Because the cochineal is so finely ground, coffee filters are very slow. Van Stralen suggests old sheeting, which I don’t have, so what I do is piggy back the liquid into a number of filters. When the filtering process becomes very slow, I lift up the currently draining filter, slide a new one into the cone, and decant the liquid from the old filter into the new. I also continue to pour the overnight stock into each newer filter. This time I used about 5 filters, but the process was not particularly tedious. The used filters, bugs and all, are then set aside to be used for later dye sessions.

The final result is a very clear liquid, with little particulate matter.

Flammegarn

Early this morning, I got up to meet a cool, breezy morning with a clear sky and the promise of perfect weather. What more could be asked for on a day when the morning is to be spent outdoors dyeing yarn? Everything from the last pre-dyeing days was gathered together – the pans, the spoons, scales, and so on, including the skeins of pre-mordanted yarn. Today, a number of things were planned, and happened: dyeing both commercial and handspun yarn with cochineal and black oak bark, also known as quercitron.

What is flammegarn?

Today’s entry is about flammegarn, which is an old Scandinavian method of making yarn with variegated colors. A skein (or two, or three) is tied off with cord, immersed into a dyepot, and colored. The result is a “flame yarn” – so named because this was traditionally done in red over white yarn – with splotches of red and white coloring which knit up into a space-dyed yarn. Modern dyers do this – just google “flammegarn” and you will find a number of examples. Earlier this year I wrote about making flammegarn with commercial dyes, which you can read about here. Judy’s knitted up some socks out of her flammegarn – I need to get a picture of them to post.

Set up the dye materials the night before.

Last night I prepared the dye materials. Specifically, I ground up 5 g of cochineal bugs, and mixed them with an equal part of tartaric acid. Then I added hot tap water, stirred them together, and let them sit overnight. I weighed out 10 g of black oak bark, and did the same, but without the tartaric acid. I did about five dye baths this morning; out of these, two were used for the flammegarn, which is fingering weight, commercially spun blue-faced leicester in two 200-yard hanks.

Filter out the particulate matter.

The dye pot was set up by filtering out the particulate matter from the water into which I put it last night. I used an old coffee filter and a paper filter; the filter was set aside and the clear liquid placed into a large dye kettle.

Cooler dye bath temperatures are better for yellows.

Even though I was using only about 135 g. of wool (100 BFL, 35 moorit shetland), I wanted a large kettle. A larger kettle is easier to control as far as not allowing the temperature to rise very high. This is especially important with yellow as the hotter the temperature, the more the yellow can drift toward brown or greenish hues. I kept my pot around 140-150 F. The weight of dye matter to fiber (the BFL specifically) was 1:10 – 10 g. oak bark to 100 g. of BFL, which had been premordanted with alum and tartaric acid.

According to J.N. Liles, most of the black oak bark color will be taken up in the first 20 minutes of immersion. This proved to be the case. I pulled both the BFL and moorit out periodically to check the color, and once I liked it, I put in a piece of copper pipe – about a thumb’s length – and a pinch of gypsum (the chalk my husband used in beer making to change the pH of his brew, as well as increase the availability of calcium and sulfur ions). Liles recommends adding “1/2 tsp. of chalk” but doesn’t state whether it is calcium carbonate or sulfate, so I used the gypsum. The color in the pot became a tad bit brighter – a rather mellow, pale gold.

Prepare the flammegarn by tying off sections of the skeins.

While the dye bath was heating up, I took my two BFL skeins and tied string around them. The string acts as a resist, keeping the white (or lighter colored yarn) from getting dyed. After this, they were set into hot water prior to immersion into the dye bath.

This yarn was removed from the pot and set in a basin to cool enough so it could be handled for untying and re-tying to create the flammegarn yarn. While the fibers cooled, I took the remaining particulate matter of both the quercitron and the cochineal and remixed them with water, and then filtered them again. The result was a orangish coral color. This was added to the remaining dye in the pot that had been only the black oak bark. This was slowly heated while the flammegarn was prepared with more ties. This new dye bath now contained the exhaust of the cochineal and quercitron, the tin added in the last five minutes of the original cochineal dye bath, and the gypsum and piece of copper pipe. Once this bath reached about 180 F, the flammegarn was immersed into the bath. Here it remained about 10 minutes, was removed, and then dipped into ammoniated water (about 1 part ammonia to 24 parts water – 1/2 c. to 3 qts. of water). After the dip, I rinsed the yarn in clear water and spun it out in the washer before hanging the hanks up to air dry outdoors.

It’s in the water.

The water here in Thousand Oaks has a pH of 8. This means it has a slightly alkaline quality. The use of gypsum is to move the water closer toward pH 7, which is neutral. Ammonia is alkaline, and pushes cochineal toward the purples, and the tin in the dye bath helps to promote the red qualities of the cochineal. With the golden underdye of the quercitron, the overdye of the two exhaust baths created a color similar in tone to the gold. The result is a color variation in the yarn ranging from pale gold, to darker gold, corals and pinks.

Voila!

The final results are below. The colors are a bit lighter, but the photograph does a good job of showing the true colors. My camera pushes yellows and oranges toward the reds, and makes them far too intense at times. If you click on the photo, you should be able to see the skeins in a larger photograph, which will help you get an idea about how they look in real life. Bigger is better, here! These skeins most likely will become my own pair of flammegarn socks, either with a 2×2 rib for the ankle, or plain knitting, unless I create a little scarf with some plain knitting combined with lace.