Natural Dyeing Yarn with Avocado Skins and Pits

We eat a lot of avocados. In salads, on toast, as guacamole, or just cut up and given to the boys as a snack. So it should not be a surprise that the second natural dyeing project I should try would be avocado skins and pits. Apparently if you keep them separate they will give slightly different colours, but I pooled them together for this set of four naturally dyed skeins.

I've been collecting them in a bag in my freezer for the past month, and when I hit 15 (ok really I just wanted to give it a go already and 15 is the number I had) I decided it was time.

I used 15 avocado skins and pits to dye 400g of yarn. After scooping out the tasty parts I scraped the skins clean with the spoon and rinsed everything in tap water. Some skins (about 4) were fresh that day, the others had been frozen for up to 1 month.

To extract the dye: I put the skins in about 3.5 litres of water. The pits I chopped up in my food processor to icrease the surface area in hopes more dye would be extracted. I added this to my pot and brought the whole thing just to a boil, then reduced heat to a simmer for 1 hour, stirring ocasionally. Then I let the pot rest and cool for 24 hours. I strained out the liquid and had 3 litres of dye solution. Note to self, invest in a fine mesh strainer for dyeing.

Yarn: 4 skeins of 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon sock weight yarn, bought online here.

Skein 1 and 2.

I soaked my yarn in water overnight. I poured half of my dye solution into my pot (I use a large enameled one bought on amazon, the porceline enamel surface is non reactive and this pot was cheeper than similar size stainless steel ones). And added an extra 3 litres of water. In to the pot went skeins of presoaked but not otherwise treated yarn. I brout the temperature up to just under a boil, reduced heat and simmered for 1 hour.

Skein 1: No mordant.

You'll see the without any help at all, avocado dyes wool to a lovely pale blush.Apparently if you keep skins and pits separate they'll give slightly different shades, and again, you can intensify colours by creating a more concentrated dye stock (ie use way more avocados), but this pale colour is very pretty in of itself, and the yarn was beautifully soft. No colour washed away with rinsing.

Skein 2: Iron after bath.

After removing skein 1 from the pot I pulled skein 2 out and hung it above the pot (did not rinse, just got it out of the water). My dye bath was still hot, I added in 1/4 tsp of ferrous sulfate powder (Iron mordant purchased from Dharma Trading Co.) and stirred it into solution. Then I lowered my skein quickly back into the pot. Bam! The colour change was mediate, with the skein darkening to a silvery purple. The trick with an iron bath is that it is non-reversible and the colour progresses with time. I should have started with even less than 1 tsp, but alas, that's why this is a dye experiment. But after two minutes the skein had deepened to a great silvery purple and I quickly pulled it out and rinsed it off., not wanting it to darken too far.

There still seemed to be quite a bit of dye in my pot, so I ran downstairs, grabbed another skein of 100% merino (100g DK weight) and threw it into the pot as is (dry!). You can see that skein (the bottom one) is lighter in colour than the first skein in that pot, showing that the dye pot is exhausting. If I had unlimited time and yarn, I would have dyed a full gradient until the pot fully exhausted (one day...).

I cleaned my pot (scrub really well, the tiniest leftover iron residue can affect your colours) and got ready for Alum.

Skeins 3 and 4

These skeins needed pre-mordanting with alum. Into my pot went 4 litres of water and 2 tsp of aluminum sulfate (Alum, Jacquard brand purchased on Amazon). I added my two skeins, which had previously soaked for 1 hour in water in my sink, and heated the pot to just under a boil, then reduced heat and simmered for 1 hour. I let the pot cool and sit overnight before removing the yarn (but not rinsing it).

Skein 3: Alum premordanted

I added the second half of my dye solution to my pot, along with an extra 3 litres of water. Into the pot went my two premordanted with alum skeins of yarn. I brought the whole thing up to just below a boil, reduced the heat and let simmer for 1 hour (I know same old same old). Then I pulled out one skein, the colour in this premordanted skein was nearly identical to skein 1 above. The major difference however was that the alum treatment left the yarn feeling crunchy. This is why it is recommended by many natural dyers that you include some cream of tartar (tartaric acid) to your pot when mordanting with alum, as the acidic pH helps to keep the wool nice and soft. Interesting that this didn't happen in my previous onion skin dying experiments. I may do an acid treatment on this skein and see if if helps to soften it up, since the texture, while not totally horrible, isn't as desirable as the softness of this skein originally.

Skein 4: Alum premordanted and Iron afterbath.

Just like before, I pulled my fourth skein out of the still hot pot and hung it out of the way. I added 1/4 tsp of iron to the pot. Stirred it up and then lowered my skein back into it all at once. Again the colour began to change imediately and although not nearly as dark despite using the same amount of iron (perhaps an effect of the alum treatment). This time I let it simmer for about 10 minutes before pulling the skein. Its concrete grey, not as deep as skein 2 above and without the purple cast.

So there they are, four beautiful skeins, four truly distinct colours, from one batch of avocado dye.

Boreal Forest Cowl and Hat

When I hear the term Boreal Forest, I think of Northern Ontario, where I grew up, and driving along highway 17 from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay. It's very nostalgic for me, and moreso now that I've been living in the Alberta Praries for the past 8 years.

Last year when I saw the first pattern released in Curious Handmade Presents Knitvent 2016 (Helen Stewart) was a colourwork cowl called Boreal Forest, I knew I wanted to knit it ASAP.

Boreal Forrest Cowl Designed by Renee Callahan.

It was just so pretty, plus I love stranded knitting, something about it makes projects fly off the needles.

Problem, I didn't have any pretty worsted weight yarn in my stash in the colours I wanted for this project.

Solution, I did have a couple skeins of bare Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Superwash Worsted in my bin of undyed yarns, and a fearless aditude towards dyeing yarn with food colouring.

You can watch me dye this yarn in this video here (click the link to watch on YouTube).

And the yarn turned out beautifully!

I knit up the cowl straight away last winter.

Here's a shot of my floats, so lovely and even, you can kind of see the trees through them.

And had enough yarn leftover to knit the matching hat this fall.

Boreal Forest Cowl and Boreal Forest Hat project pages.

I did modify the hat a little to lengthen it (notes on my project page describe the simple changes), but other than that, I have a beautiful set ready to be gifted this Christmas.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned that it's only 71 days until Christmas? it seems like a lot (I mean it's not even Halloween Yet) until you consided how long my list of gift knitting is, and also that I have to finish writing my thesis by then (thesis update, 100 pages!!)

How far in advance do you start your holiday knitting, and do you still manage not to get everything done in time like me?

How to overdye your hand knits using food coloring.

So as you might know by now, I'm expecting identical twin boys in June. So of course I'm thrilled to be knitting and crocheting as much as I can for them during my pregnancy. In fact, I'm doing a weekly vlog about it over on my youtube channel.

One project that I recently finished is the In a Pear Tree baby Cardigan. The pattern is available as a free Ravelry download, and was designed by the Barbarian Horde.

I knit it using some yarn that I had recycled and dyed... thinking that since the yarn had both blue and pink in it, it might somehow be gender neutral. (I knit this up before I knew if I was expecting boys or girls).

But yeah... it totally looks like a girl's sweater.

So I thought, why not see if I can overdye it blue?

So I got out my handy dandy dye pot, and dug out all of my blue food colouring and got to work.

Oh I filmed it too!

And I have to say, I think I like the result.

It came out maybe a little darker than I wanted, but that's ok, I still like it. Now I'm off to go knit a second one, and overdye it differently (because twins shouldn't match perfectly, right?)

Let me know if you've had any successful overdyeing experiments in the comments below!

May Etsy Update: all the yarns!

Yesterday I did a major Etsy shop update, with tonnes of beautiful hand dyed, recycled yarns. Here are some of my favourites.

These beauties are from the same sweater, love that pop of sparkle in this great wool acrylic blend.

All three of these colourways were dyed on the same %100 lambs wool sweater base. They're sport weight and would make a great pop of colour in a shawl (especially a West Knit).

Check out my shop for more great yarns at great prices! 

Dyeing combination fibers - Swatches!

A friend of mine had this giant cone of yarn that I think she picked up at a garage sale a while back. Just yards and yards of it,and all in a boring nude colour, so I offered to dye it up for her. The problem? It's about a 50/50 linen/silk blend. which means half of the fiber will want an acid dye, and the other half a reactive dye. So that means experiments!

So I skeined off 1000 yards to set aside for the final dyeing, and then wrapped up a couple mini-skeins to do some tests.

Here's the results, from top to bottom: original colour, Acid dye teal, Acid dye peach, Reactive dye Violet, Reactive Dye Black, and the last one I cooked the yarn with some saskatoon berry preserve, which came out a nice purple, but faded out in the wash.

In the close up of the teal, you can see that the acid dye, which will dye only the silk mainly dyed the white flecks in the yarn. Which means the base yarn is the linen, and the white flecked single it's plied with is the silk.

The peach, also an acid dye hit the flecks as well, but being a red based dye, hit the linnign a bit as well. The fiber reactive violet dyed a bit more uniformly. But since I used almost no salt, it didn't have full penetrance in the linen.

Same goes with the black. The berry dyed yarn faded after washing, and the effect achieved was mainly just to tone down the yellow of the original colour.

Easter Dye LeftOvers

The best thing about Easter, if you're into Dyeing yarn that is, is all the leftover dye in bright colours that's around afterwards. You can usually find egg dyeing kits after the holiday for as little as a dollar. And those kits contain enough acid-reactive dye to colour a fair amount of yarn, even after it's been used on eggs.

I mixed up the dye pellets according to the package directions. Dissolved 1 pellet in 1 tbsp of vinegar, once fully dissolved I added half a cup of warm water.

Added my eggs and voila, beautiful, vibrant colours. No heating necessary. Under the acidic conditions, the food color in the pellets binds to the proteins of the egg shell. Now just to get it to bind to the proteins in my yarn.

I used a skein of recycled yarn, 40% wool, 60% acrylic I believe. And while the acrylic wont pick up any of the color, there should be enough wool content to still get a nice vibrant yarn.

I pre-soaked for only about 10 minutes, and wrung out my yarn (this step is important, you don't want the yarn fully saturated, you want it to be wet to break the surface tension, but still ready to soak up your dye). If you were using 100% wool, you might want to be careful about wringing out the yarn to get the excess water out (try a salad spinner?) to avoid felting, but since this is a blend, it was ok. Then I spread it into a roasting pan and began pouring my dye onto the yarn. I used paper towel to absorb any liquid that the yarn wasn't, since I didn't want my colours to bleed across the pan. I also arranged my colours according to the colour wheel so adjacent colours could blend into each other without muddying.

Then I popped the pan (with the lid on) into the oven at 100'C/225'F for about 20-30min. Remove from the oven and let cool to room temp before rinsing (again you don't want to risk shocking your yarn and felting it).

I don't have any of the pictures of the finished yarn with me, so I'll edit them to the post later, but the finished result looks great! This was my first go at dyeing in the oven, and I can't wait to give it another go.

Hand Painted recycled yarn.

Available on Etsy.

This weekend I hand painted my very first yarn.

The yarn was recycled from a thrift store sweater.

The fiber content is 42% wool, 25% viscose, 21% nylon, 8% angora and 4% cashemere, and the yarn is a DK.

I pre-soaked the skeins in room temperature water with a bit of white vinegar in it.

And prepared my Wilton's food colouring dyes. (I love the way the purple started breaking right on the paper towel!

I lay out my skeins on some plastic wrap.

And started painting. I way underestimated how much dye I'd need for so much yarn, and mixed up some more.

Look at those beautiful colours! The pink broke out of the purple.

Next, rolled the whole thing up and popped it into the microwave.

Once it had cooled it was into the bath tube to wash, and hang to dry.

The colors turned out beautifully.

Especially with Easter on it's way.

One skein will be listed on Etsy to sell, a whopping 450 yards, great for a project like a shall.

Another 450 yards I wrapped up for my self. The mini skein...well I'll be saving that for something special.