Toddler-Painted Yarn!

My toddler just helped me dye some yarn for his upcoming sweater! Yep, really. My 1.5-year-old "hand-painted" the yarn in a big plastic bin with food coloring and squeeze bottles, obviously with significant guidance from me to keep the mess relatively contained. After he went to bed for the night, I heat-set the colors with vinegar and my yarn-dyeing kettle on the stovetop. This was a super fun activity for him (wait, Mama is ENCOURAGING me to make a mess?) and my first post-baby foray back into yarn dyeing, which I have been missing very much.

We used Lion Brand Wool-Ease, which fit all our various criteria. Most importantly, the dye had to be child-safe, so no strong chemicals. Food coloring or Kool-Aid were the only two dyes that I was willing to put in a toddler's hands, meaning we needed to dye animal fiber. For cost reasons, that animal fiber was wool, because I wasn't going to experiment with anything expensive. And finally, because I want him to wear the sweater that I eventually make with it, I needed a soft, non-itchy, and machine-washable yarn. I love the acrylic-wool blend Wool-Ease for its comfortable texture, durability, and much cheaper price than pure wools that are washable and soft. As a huge bonus, since only the wool content (20%) of the Wool-Ease takes dye, the resulting color is less intense than obtained from dyeing pure wool -- this is helpful when dyeing with food coloring which can give super bright, borderline garish colors on wool. Oh, and it's easier to heat-set Wool-Ease without felting, which is good for sleep-deprived parents.

For the cardigan I am planning to make, I skeined up approximately 3.5 balls of Wool-Ease for this dye batch. I knew it would be a little crowded in the kettle, but that was ok with me as I wasn't going for a uniform color. Here is the yarn pre-soaking in a plastic bin in the bathtub.

To avoid a brown mess, I limited the color selection to two main colors, blue and green. I had two squeeze bottles, so we started with one bottle of each and refilled those as we went along. I also had two different brands of food coloring, one regular and one gel, so we used both greens and both blues for slightly different shades to keep things interesting. Even so, my toddler quickly realized I was holding out on some of the colors so he tried to climb up and help himself to "purple," so I mixed up a purple batch with one drop of red in the next blue bottle. I made the bottles pretty concentrated, with 5 drops of gel food coloring or 7 drops of regular food coloring in each one and the yarn looked pretty well covered when we were done. Unfortunately, with all the chaos and demands for "more more" dye, I didn't get any pictures of the yarn-painting process, and I totally forgot to take pictures of the yarn in the plastic bin before moving it to the kettle (blame that sleep deprivation I mentioned earlier).

To heat-set the dye with vinegar, I ended up doing five heatings. For each, I heated the kettle until it just began to boil, covered the lid, turned off the heat, and let the bath sit until the water became clear. The first heating exhausted the hand-painted dye quickly, within 30 minutes. Even though I thought we had used a lot of food coloring in the squeeze bottles, the yarn was a very light pastel after this first heat. So I added another 5-ish drops of food coloring per 3oz of yarn, basically kettle-dyeing at this point but following the general color scheme already painted into the yarn. Then I heated again and let the dye exhaust, up to the fifth time. I was surprised at how much food coloring the yarn keep taking up, but by the fifth exhaustion (the next morning) I thought the yarn looked bright enough, so I let it sit and cool for the rest of the day before washing. Altogether we used about 40 drops of Dollar Tree food coloring and 10 drops of Wilton gel food coloring per 3oz of yarn. The colors held fast during rinsing and gentle wash with baby shampoo.

While I am very happy with how the yarn turned out and my toddler loved the activity, there was substantial artistic input from me in the kettle-dye to get the yarn more vibrantly colored, so I plan to experiment in future rounds to keep more of the toddler-painted look. We will be doing this again soon with more yarn for a matching Mama-sized cardigan, and I will try including vinegar in the pre-soak, letting him paint the yarn directly in the (unheated) pot, using more dye in the squeeze bottles, and adding less water in the heat-setting process to reduce letting the colors run in the dyebath or needing to add more dye to the kettle.

Materials:

- Animal fiber yarn of desired quantity (highly recommend Wool-Ease)

- Scrap yarn for ties

- Large plastic bin or bucket, ideally clear

- Bathtub or outdoor space

- Plastic squeeze bottles

- Food coloring

- White vinegar

- Dedicated pot used for dyeing (not used for food)

- Disposable chopsticks or tongs (not used for food) for manipulating yarn in dyebath

Prep before toddler/child gets involved:

- Wind yarn into loose skeins. Tye loosely in 4-5 spots around the skein (I use scraps of bright-colored acrylic yarn for ties).

- Place yarn in plastic bin and submerge completely in room temperature water. You may place toys or other objects on top of the yarn to weight it down so it doesn't float. Let soak for at least 30 minutes.

- Place plastic bin in bathtub or outdoors, wherever you are ok with a bit of food coloring spillage.

- Fill plastic squeeze bottles with water and food coloring. I had small bottles and used about 5-7 drops of food coloring per bottle (and we refilled several times, for a total of about 12-15 bottles worth of dye). I brought the food coloring with us into the bathroom so it was easier to refill the bottles as we used them up.

Toddler/child activity portion:

- Give toddler/child squeeze bottles to squeeze the dye onto the yarn. Younger toddlers may need more guidance to help squeeze onto the yarn instead of all over the room.

- Encourage or help toddler/child to cover all the yarn with dye. If necessary and desired, you can also dip the undyed sections in dye later.

Steps after toddler/child art is completed:

- Obviously, please keep children safely away from hot stoves and kettles.

- Transfer yarn to yarn-dyeing kettle. Add enough water and vinegar (about 1 part vinegar to 10 parts water) to just cover the yarn and place on stovetop. Turn on the heat until water just begins to simmer, then cover pot and turn off heat. Let sit for at least 30 minutes before opening lid to check.

- Wait until dye is exhausted, when the water in the dyebath is clear and uncolored.

- Lift a small section of yarn out of the water to inspect -- if it looks dark/vibrant enough for you, then move to next step. Note that the color will lighten when the yarn dries (see example photo below). If not colorful enough, then add food coloring to dyebath, use tongs or chopsticks to gently distribute the dye around all the yarn, and repeat previous 2 steps.

- When happy with the yarn's color saturation, let the kettle and yarn cool completely to room temperature.

- Remove yarn from kettle and rinse well until water runs completely clear. Washing with gentle yarn soap at this point is optional but recommended.

- Hang until completely dry.

- Twist into neat skeins or wind into loose balls for storage.

A final note: in the photo below, I wet a small section of the dried yarn to demonstrate the color saturation and shade difference. The change from wet to dry is definitely noticeable and is something to keep in mind when you're deciding when to stop adding more dye in the pot!

Avocado Dye Experiment - Part 1

 

Avocados yield a beautiful pink dye. Surprising? Specifically, the dye comes from the pits and skins (so you get to eat all the yummy bits, yay!)

The internet has several "recipes" or posts about avocado dye, but the instructions and results are highly variable. Success and color seems to depend on pH, type of avocado, extraction method/time, fiber, and ?? magic ?? (for the links that I found useful, see bottom of article). This experimental series is designed to see if I can reliably extract pink dye from avocados on different natural fibers.

For this experiment, I made dye from the pits and skins of 11 avocados. I scrubbed off the residual bits of avocado flesh, chopped the pits into eighths, and froze everything in a big ziplock bag until I had enough (maybe 2-3 weeks). [Note: you don't need 11 avocados. As I found out, 11 is wayyyyy overkill. Probably just 4-5 avocados would have been more than enough for my half pound of wool.]

As always, I used whatever base yarns that I had at home.
- Full skein (227g/8oz) of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (100% wool) - base color: natural
- 4 ties (minimal weight) around the skein of Lion Brand Wool-Ease (20% wool, 80% acrylic) - note: the acrylic content should not dye, so the final color should be lighter than pure wool - base color: fisherman
- 2 ties (minimal weight) around the skein of Red Heart Classic 10 Crochet Thread (100% mercerized cotton) - base color: natural

Materials Needed
- Avocado pits and skins
- Wool and/or cotton yarn
- Dye pot large enough for yarn to move around freely
- Scouring agent or dish soap
- Baking soda or washing soda (latter preferred)
- Dye pot or two (not used for food)

Methods
I scoured everything per my standard procedure detailed here, leaving the yarn in a bucket of water because I was planning to dye soon. I didn't use any mordants for this experiment because avocado dye isn't supposed to require mordant - avocados have naturally high tannin content, which acts as the mordant. (I do plan to try alum and possibly black walnut tannin in future experiments.)

Extract Dye
I wanted to see if the skins and pits gave different colors. So, I put chopped up avocado skins in one pot and chopped up pits in the other. I read that you're not supposed to boil the dye because that can brown it, so I alternated heating for 5-10 minutes (watching to make sure the pots didn't get past simmering) and letting the pots sit, covered, for 30-60 minutes on the stove with the heat off. I did this for 3 cycles of heating/waiting, then left it alone to sit overnight. Throughout the next day I did 6 more heat/wait cycles. (Total dye extraction time = 25 hours).

During this process, I kept an eye on the color of the dyebaths. I don't have litmus paper to test pH, so I just relied on my eyes. If things didn't look pink or at least red/orange, I added some baking soda to raise the pH of the dyebath (make it more alkaline). In hindsight, I should have measured the baking soda amount... sorry, will do that next time. My rough guess: about 1/8 cup of baking soda per pot. As you can kind of see from the before-and-after pics below, the dyebaths were kind of murky yellow before baking soda but got much more red/pink as the pH increased. The dyebaths got more concentrated as time passed, but the color change was really from the baking soda.

Dye

I scooped out as many of the avocado pit and skin chunks as I could (and saved them in a plastic bag and froze them, in case I wanted to use them again). Then I draped my yarn across the two pots, with one end of the skein in the avocado skins dyebath and the other end in the avocado pits dyebath. I did about 8 heat/wait cycles throughout the day.

The pot edges were kind of high so the middle didn't get much dye, and the dye didn't really wick up the yarn to cover the dry spot. I tried to rotate the yarn slightly throughout the dye process and pour some of the dye over the middle section so that it got at least a little dye.

As always, I was hoping for as vibrant of a color as possible, so I left the yarn in the dyebath for the rest of the day and overnight (about 24 hours total).

The next morning, I took the yarn out and let it dry fully BEFORE rinsing.

Results

After letting the yarn dry for 2 days, I rinsed in cold water until the water ran clear. Here are pictures of the yarn before and after rising. The rinsewater from the first few rinses was super dark, almost the color of the dyebath (which makes sense, I guess).

On the 100% wool, the avocado skin dye came out a bit pinker, and the avocado pits created a somewhat browner pink. Here is the stretched-out wool skein after fully drying - skin-dyed side on the left, pit-dyed side on the right.

The wool blend (20% wool, 80% acrylic) came out a nice blush color, lighter than the pure wool (as expected). I didn't notice much of a difference between skins and pits, probably because such a small fraction of the yarn dyed.

The cotton thread was fairly different between skins and pits, with the pits giving a softer light pink color (middle of picture below) and the skins dying a much darker, almost orange-tinged pink (right). Undyed cotton thread is at the left for reference.

Conclusions and Future Directions
I'm really happy with how this experiment turned out! The colors are beautiful on all fibers and especially vivid on the wool.

11 avocados gave WAY more dye than I needed for 8oz of wool. The dyebath was roughly the same color when I poured it out as when I started steeping the yarn. I probably could have dyed at least twice as much fiber to the same color (but unfortunately I needed my stove back for cooking actual food and didn't have time for more).

My next step with avocado dye is to do a second extraction from the saved pits and skins (together) from this experiment. I scooped out most of the solid content but there were definitely some left when I poured out the dyebath, so I'm guessing I have around 9 avocados worth for the second extraction. I'll use this to dye a full 1000yd cone of crochet thread (100% mercerized cotton) because I'm designing a tank top that would look lovely with some of this gorgeous pink.

Useful Links About Avocado Dye - Sites with info that I found helpful. I haven't experimented enough to personally verify all their information, but I've tried some of their tips or think they make sense/are worth a try.

https://rebeccadesnos.com/blogs/journal/avocado-dye-faqs-top-tips-for-pink
http://www.allnaturaldyeing.com/dyeing-with-avocados/

Beet Natural Dye Experiment - Part 1

I cooked some beets recently, and since dyeing yarn has been on my mind, the opportunity presented itself to use the dark pink cooking water....

As always, I used whatever non-fancy base yarns that I had on hand, split into 5 mini-skein samples.
Sample A: Bernat Handicrafter Cotton (100% cotton) - scoured, mordanted with alum
Sample B: Lion Brand Wool-Ease (20% wool, 80% acrylic*) - unscoured, unmordanted (1 tie)
Sample C: Lion Brand Wool-Ease (20% wool, 80% acrylic*) - scoured, unmordanted (3 acrylic ties)
Sample D: Lion Brand Wool-Ease (20% wool, 80% acrylic*) - scoured, mordanted with alum
Sample E: I thought this was Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (100% wool) - scoured, mordanted with alum. But, based on the results, maybe it was Wool-Ease as well and I mislabeled it at some point between making mini-skeins (a while ago I made a bunch) and now?

* Note: the beets shouldn't dye the acrylic here, so the overall color should be lighter than pure wool)

Materials Needed
- Beets
- Wool or cotton yarn
- Dye pot large enough for yarn to move around freely
- Scouring agent or dish soap
- Alum
- Vinegar
- Salt
- Dye pot (not used for food)

Methods
Scour yarn
I don't have any specific wool detergent yet (but might invest in some if I plan to do a lot more dyeing), so I just used gentle dish soap and very gently swished around my yarns. Then I heated up the soapy water + yarn to just below a boil and let it cool again to room temp. Once cooled, I drained off the soap water and rinsed well in cold water.

Mordant
There are many great sets of instructions for mordanting specific fibers (see for example this guide to mordanting wool with alum from All Fiber Arts).

Since I had a mix of fibers in my test, I used a generic procedure dissolving about 1/4 of my fiber weight in alum to warm water in my dye pot. Then I added my fibers and simmered for 30 minutes, then let it cool down and sit overnight.

Extract Dye

This happened while I was cooking. I made pickled beets, which involves boiling the beets for 30 minutes, then adding vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices and boiling another 15 minutes. I saved the cooking water from this (which already contained vinegar and salt) in a jar in the fridge for a few days while I prepared the fiber. If you do this, you probably want to label the jar so household members don't drink it... it's an appetizing dark pink juice color (it's still completely edible at this point, but accidentally drinking beet pickle juice... yuck).

Dye
After my yarns were mordanted (and I pre-soaked the yarn that was intentionally unmordanted for experimental purposes), I poured off the alum water and poured the beet juice into the dyepot. Since it super cold from the fridge, I left my yarn out out of the pot while I heated the dyebath to room temp, then added the yarn to bring everything up to a simmer for 90 minutes. I also added a pinch of salt early in the heating process because I didn't use that much during the cooking/dye extraction.

I was hoping for as vibrant of a color as possible, so I left the yarn in the dyebath to cool and let it sit the rest of the day and overnight (about 24 hours total, including the heating period). Obviously I still had to eat that day, so once the dyepot cooled down I took it off the stove and moved it somewhere out of the way. Sometime during the afternoon, I noticed that the color had turned a darker brick red, rather than the pinker color that it was in the fridge (more notes on this later).

The next morning, I took the yarn out and (wearing gloves) rinsed in cold water. Then I let it dry.

Results

Top row: cotton. From left to right: undyed, scoured + alum + dyed.
Bottom row: wool-ease. From left to right: undyed, not scoured or mordanted, scoured but not mordanted, and scoured + alum + dyed

After drying, I ended up with a range of peaches, depending on the fiber and mordanting. The cotton (Sample A) was darkest, kind of a brownish peach. The unscoured Wool-Ease (sample B) was classic light peach, and the scoured Wool-Eases (samples C and D) were darker peach with hints of salmony warmth.

Scouring had more of an effect than mordanting, with the unscoured (sample B) coming out a touch lighter/more peachy. The two scoured samples (C and D) were about the same, even though D was pre-mordanted with alum and C was not. D might have been ever-so-slightly darker, but it's hard to tell if that's just my own confirmation bias.

As noted above, I expected sample E to be darker than B-D since acrylic doesn't absorb color and sample E was supposed to be 100% wool. Given the result that E turned out exactly like D, I'm going to try again in the future with a new wool mini-skein made straight from a skein with labels still on it to make sure it is actually wool. So I'm not interpreting anything about E right now, and I didn't include it in my picture to avoid any confusion further on (if you're wondering anyway, it looks just like D).

A Big Observation, Conclusions, Future Directions
The dyebath color darkened and got more red/less pink as the dyeing process went on. When I finished and was cleaning up, I noticed my enamelware dyepot had a crack in the lining with metal showing through. This was definitely not there during scouring or mordanting steps. In hindsight, while simmering the yarn in the dyebath I had heard a single pop/crack sound, but didn't think much of it at the time. That was probably the lining cracking, and maybe the exposure to whatever iron is in the pot darkened/saddened my colors. I can't buy a new dyepot right now, so will test this in the future maybe with a microwave or sun dye to add heat without exposure to the dyepot. (Edit: I acquired a new dyepot... convinced myself that my old cooking pot needed to be replaced, which of course frees that pot up for dye...)

Alternative interpretations for the red instead of pink results:
- Too much heat (either too hot, or heated for too long). I don't think it was too hot, because the cooking process involves boiling and that still yielded pink. It might have been heating for too long, which I could test in the future.
- Sat too long/oxidized. Can't rule this out. The pickled beet juice sat for a few days in the fridge before dyeing and stayed pink throughout that wait time, but it was sealed in an air-tight jar. The dye pot was covered, but definitely not air-tight.
- Something in the water. I used tap water, which is pretty clean but might have had tiny impurities in it. Not sure why this would cause darkening over time during the dyeing, rather than right away though.
- Too much or too little vinegar or salt? I didn't really measure, but used about 1/4 vinegar to water for the cooking recipe. Some of the water probably boiled off, but that was the approximate ratio. I could experiment with adding more vinegar or adding baking soda to adjust the pH. (Later edit: upon further research, I found out that the dye compound in beets, betanin, is known to be pH sensitive and turns more brown as pH becomes alkaline. So I will make sure to rinse better after scouring and add some more vinegar for good measure.)

The dyebath was also still quite red when I was done. I used 1.3 pounds (590g) of beets for about 15g of yarn across all of the mini-skeins, so I could probably have dyed more yarn.

Overall, I was expecting more pink than orange, but the peachy color is also very pretty, especially in the wool-eases (blends). I'm not as big of a fan of the cotton, which was much brighter while wet but dulled while drying. There will definitely be a part 2 of this experiment!

Seagrass Kettle Dye

It's been a long time since I posted anything, and an even longer time since I did anything with my giant undyed wool stash... so I took some dyestuffs that I had around the house and kettle dyed a couple skeins.

Materials used:

• 2 skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (color: Natural)
• blue liquid food coloring
• 1 packet lemonade koolaid (actually it was a generic knockoff, but I threw out the package before thinking to write down what it was -- the important details are that it was sugarless and yellow)
• 1 bag black tea
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee mix
• 1/2 teaspoon (approximate) turmeric
• copper penny solution (made by soaking ~100 copper pennies in 1 quart vinegar + water solution for a long time, probably a year -- not really recommended to soak this long)

If you couldn't tell by the materials list, this was an improv job. I was shooting for something with deep blue and turquoise tones. The end result turned out a bit more green/yellow/brown overall and the blue was lighter than I wanted, but it's still pretty.

Thursday night: I loosely reskeined 2 store skeins of yarn and soaked them for 3 hours in the copper penny solution. Then I poured the copper solution back into a container and let the yarn dry on some trays. 

Friday morning: In my dye pot (which is never ever used for food!), I wet the yarn a little bit with the copper solution and some fresh vinegar + water mixture. Using 2 skeins of yarn = 1 full pound = very full pot! I started with blue food coloring, squirting a bunch in one area of the pot. In retrospect, I might have needed more blue to get a more saturated color, but it looked super almost scary blue at the time. I also dissolved the koolaid knockoff in about 2 pints of water and poured that on the other side of the pot and made 1 pint of tea and poured it roughly in the middle. Then I poured more water + vinegar in the pot until the wool was covered, and turned on the heat.

About 30 minutes in, I was worried the yellow and light brown were getting overrun by blue, so I dissolved some turmeric in hot water and made some instant coffee and poured those roughly over the yellow and brown areas. As a result, I'm not sure if the almost-fluorescent yellow spots in the final product are from the koolaid or the turmeric... but if I had to guess I'd say the former.

After another 30 minutes (1 hour total), I turned off the heat because I was worried the yarn was starting to felt. I couldn't stop poking at the yarn to try to see what the underside looked like (bad of me!) so it was agitated more than necessary. I left it to cool for several hours on the stove..... then poured out the water.... then lifted the yarn onto trays to cool for another hour or so.

Finally I rinsed the yarn, washed with soap, and laid both skeins out on my drying rack.

Theoretically these should have dried overnight, but I think the skeins were too bulky since there was so much yarn in each one and they were still super damp in the morning. I rewrapped them on Saturday morning and let them dry all day Saturday. And then I rotated the drying racks 180 degrees so the other side was closer to the window and let them dry all day Sunday, just to be safe. Here they are drying this afternoon (Sunday):

skein 1 / side 1

skein 1 / side 2

skein 2 / side 1

skein 2 / side 2

I'll leave them on the drying racks all day tomorrow (Monday), because I have to go to work and won't have time to take them down until Monday evening. Edit: added below pic of finished skeins on Monday night <3

skein 1 (left) and skein 2 (right)

Tulip Sun Dye

I started a sun dye jar on July 1 with a container of pink tulip petals that I gathered earlier this summer (don't worry, I didn't go pick my neighbors' flowers, I collected petals that had already fallen on the ground from a park with thousands of flowers so that I could get enough). They were in my freezer for about two months while I worked on other things, but now they've been soaking for 1 1/2 weeks in a solution of 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol and 8 cups water. The jar is on my sunniest windowsill (inside, because from my apartment on the 20th floor there isn't a balcony or safe way to hang these on the outside of the window). This is what the jar looked like earlier this afternoon:

After the picture above, I strained out the remaining mushy petal scraps and added the yarn to the jar. I'm testing two yarns: 100% cotton (Bernat Handicrafter Cotton) and 100% wool (Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool).

Here is the jar after the yarn was added:

And here is the soggy petal mess that came out of the jar (lovely, right? smelled great too...):

I'm going to let the sun dye jar + yarn sit in the sunny window until the end of August. I'll update then with pictures of the results!