natural dyeing – 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, 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.

Little Things

Like proud parents, we point out our lovely, young children!

The rhizome went in a week ago, the madder seeds two weeks ago. I thought the madder wouldn’t sprout, but here it is. 2 out of 7 seeds have sprouted – 18 remain.

Natural Dyeing: Mordanting

Setting Up

It is a bright, crisp spring morning, perfect weather for mordanting outdoors. The stainless steel dyeing pots have been pulled out, scales, yarn, alum and tartaric acid, buckets, goggles, gloves, basins, buckets, towels, thermometer, mixing bowls and spoons. First to be set up was a kettle of water to heat on the burner. Next, 100 g. of wool weighed out, and set to soak in hot water. On the smaller scale, a plastic bowl was set down, and then turned on to set the tare weight to zero. 5 g. tartaric acid weighed and emptied into a stainless steel bowl. 10 g. alum weighed out, and added to the bowl with the tartaric acid. Hot water added to this to dissolve the crystals. Meanwhile, I continued to organize a few things as the water heated.

Weighing

Having two different scales, one for large items and one for small, is great. These are the scales Josh uses in brewing, to weigh grain and hops. The large one does both pounds and kg and g, while the other one does tenths of a gram, along with other weighting systems.

Traditional natural dyes have an alum-to-wool weight ratio of 1:4. This means for every pound of wool, 1/4 lb. alum is to be used, or for every 100 g. of wool, 25 g. of alum is to be used. Most books warn you not to use too much alum as it makes the wool sticky. It does, and it is a really disgusting feeling. Nor can you fix the problem.

Trudy van Stralen, author of Indigo, Madder, and Marigold recommends using a 1:10 ratio of alum to wool, and a 1:20 ratio of tartaric acid to wool. Now, trying to figure this out in pounds is absurd, and this is where the beauty of the metric system really shines. It means for 100 g. of wool, the alum proportion is 10 g, and the tartaric acid is 5 g. If this is confusing, just think of it in terms of U.S. money – $1.00 = 100 g, a dime is 10 g., and of course a nickel is 5 g.

Van Stralen also recommends using the same water and the same solution for subsequent batches of wool, saving time in heating up water, and saving money by only adding 5% more alum and 2.5% tartaric acid back to the mordant bath. Appeals to me!

Mordants-to-Wool Ratio

My first batch of mordanting wool had plenty of room in the kettle, so for the second batch, I weighed out more wool. This time it was 260 g. Using the 10% rule would give me 26 g. of alum; the 5% rule of tartaric acid would be 13 g. Given the idea that there is essentially 5% and 2.5% of alum and tartaric acid respectively remaining in the mordanting kettle, I went with an approximation of 7.5% for the alum, which was 20 g, and 3.75% for the tartaric acid, which is 10 g. I added these to the mordant water to accommodate the larger amount of fiber. I still won’t have 25% alum to wool in weight, so there should be no stickiness problem. The rest of the wool will be weighed out in 260 g batches, so it should go more quickly. If I didn’t do this, I think I could easily spend the whole day mordanting; I’d rather do it in half the time!

For all of these, the water is not boiling, but holding steady at about 200 F. The wool skeins did not get agitated by roiling water. The commercial skeins have held their crisp twist, and the handspun ones did not exit the mordant bath any more felted than they were prior to entering it.

Premordanting for Indigo?

I don’t have any idea if indigo will be affected by an alum-tartaric acid premordant, but as I figure I will be overdyeing some of my future indigo wool with quercitron, for green, and cochineal for purples, premordanting the wool could only help. That is something to be seen in the future.

Comment

The last time I used natural dyes and mordants was ages ago. I used pounds and ounces, cups and teaspoons. The metric system is far easier than the English system! I am looking forward to the results as van Stralen uses a higher concentration of dyestuff to goods; this is my plan for this adventure.

I really like van Stralen’s book because of the clear and colorful illustrations. My own small dyeing library has old and new books in it. The different approaches to mordanting and to dyeing are interesting to read, as are the approaches to dyeing.

I’ve done the one-pot-dye-and-mordant approach, which is really time efficient, but perhaps not efficient in the use of chemicals and dye materials. There is also the added nuisance of having to pull twigs and flowers out of the wool. I am hoping to avoid this, and am trying to decide if I should get some mesh bags to contain the dye materials if I cannot grind them up finely enough.

A lot of the books from the 70s use the all-in-one method. Liles book is very specific. Others are vague. For Californians, Ida Grae’s Nature’s Colors is a must-have – too many books seem to think that the entire U.S. lives on the east coast!

This round of natural dyeing is a bit more systematic compared to my usual approach to dyeing. I’m interested in seeing the results of this. Because there is time involved here, it makes sense to heed what I am doing. And, as it is also an artistic experience, I find myself contemplating what I might do with this batch of yarn or that. For instance, the Shetland is being considered for – what else? – a Shetland sweater vest. This means I can use colors and more colors, but there will be (in theory) an underlying harmony from both the moorit fleece, and the natural dyes themselves.

Final Notes

Before you begin any dyeing – natural, unnatural – I cannot emphasize enough the importance of skeining your yarn properly. Even if it comes in a commercial skein with a few ties, it most likely will not be enough. I tied off a few extra figure-eight ties on the Sea Wool, but that was not sufficient. Some tangling resulted. For my handspun, I did my usual, and placed eight ties throughout the skein. My skeiner creates skeins which are 1 yard long, so I have six feet to play with. I find that I can have very minimal tangling if I adhere to eight ties, and 3 figure-eights per tie. A lot of work, but it is more work to untangle a skein. The alpaca and Blue Faced Leicester, being very fine yarns, probably should have had even more ties.

Below is a table of my weights of fiber and mordants. This could be a handy thing for me to refer to later on!

Batch	Wool Weight (g)	Alum Weight (g)	Tartaric Acid (g)	Comments
1	105 Sea Wool	10	5	10% / 5% for initial pot.
2	260 Sea Wool	20	10	Did 7.5% / 3.75% as this was a larger amount than put in pot. 200^oF.
3	215 handspun, alpaca, Blue Face Leicester	11	5.5	Pot boiled. Skeins got tangled. 5% / 2.5%. 200^oF.
4	220 handspun moorit Shetland	11	5.5	Came out nice. 5% / 2.5%. 200^oF.
5	280 handspun moorit Shetland	14	7	Water color rather lightly olive colored. 5% / 2.5%. 200^oF.