Natural Yarn Dye Experiment

Lately I've been cooking and eating a lot of veggies from our community garden, which is all kinds of awesome-- it's organic, local, healthy, super-fresh, and FREE. Aside from the actual food, when I was hulling the purple hulled peas the other day, I thought it was pretty likely I could get a nice natural dye from them. And thus began Natural Yarn Dye Experiment! I hodge-podged a plan from the following sites if you'd like to take a look at them:

Dyeing yarn with easter egg tablets: Link

Dyeing yarn with kool-aid: Link

Making natural dyes from plants: Link

Natural dyes from Edible Items: Link

I wound my yarn into smaller skeins (I used

about 50 grams/half of my skein of Patons Classic Wool). This is to ensure more uniform coloration (so the dye doesn't miss the middle of the skein, etc.) To do this I wound the yarn around a large book and tied it loosely with scrap white acrylic yarn. I opted not to use the other yarns for this experiment because a) acrylic was unlikely to take the color at all and b) cotton was iffy (may not be colorfast, may resist color if body oils were on the fiber, etc.).

Then I put four parts water to one part vinegar in the crockpot, along with my wool yarn. This is a plant fixative and will seal the color. I let it "cook" for about an hour, in the meantime working on getting my dye solution ready!

I broke up my pea hulls into smaller pieces, 2-3 inches on average and put them in a large boiling pot. For reference, I had about 185 grams of hulls. I added a couple inches of water to the bottom of the pot and started boiling. After bringing to a boil, I let it simmer on the stove for about an hour.

After about 15 minutes, the dye solution was

looking awesome! I continued to simmer this, along with the plant fixative for about an hour. After an hour, I moved the yarn to some clean, hot water. If you shock the wool by moving it from hot to cold, you can felt the yarn. I rinsed the yarn gently by filling up a bowl with fresh hot water then draining a few times. Too much agitation can also felt the yarn.

Then I strained out the hulls, leaving my dye solution, which I then returned to the pot. I then added my wet yarn to the dye solution and simmered it on the stove for about three hours. I'm not sure that more time really made the colors more intense (according to Natural Dyes from Edible Items, an hour is about all it takes).

I moved my yarn around a bit, but I was careful not to agitate it too much. It looked so pretty!

Then I rinsed the yarn out, again in hot water. Once the water was dripping clear from the yarn, I washed it with baby shampoo by adding the soap to the water and gently spinning the yarn around the bowl. I rinsed it again andddddd...

Put it out on my drying rack! When it's 100% dry, I'll post what my finished product looks like!

Voila! It turned out a bit more brown than I'd hoped, but given the nature of the dye, it's kinda expected that it'd turn out to be an earth tone. Now what to make?!