I Have Fucked Around and I Have Found Out!
And here is the report!
How I Fucked Around: I took a hank of Lion Brand Fisherman’s wool that I tried dyeing with rose petals a couple of years ago and rather to (continue to) wait until I had sufficient rose petals to try for a better result, I decided to try with the frozen blackberries I had in my freezer that were starting to get freezer burned.
What I Found Out: The first thing I discovered was that most of the blackberries were actually blueberries. Oh well! Tossed them in too. The colour is not only about what I expected from berries, but it’s actually fairly close to what I’d wanted from the roses - a nice, light, slow saturation pink.
How I Fucked Around: I took a hank of Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool I tried dyeing with blackberry vines and leaves a couple of years ago and, since I can actually see the vines in my fence hedge really well right now since the clematis doesn’t have leaves, I decided to try dyeing it a darker yellow-green than it was. (This was most of what prompted the dyeing spree.)
What I Found Out: I discovered that under the right circumstances blackberry vines will produce not yellow-green, but a super lovely light ginger colour! Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what those circumstances are. I might get some more yarn at some point and try playing around to repeat results…
How I Fucked Around: I took some homespun yarn that a friend of Mum’s gave her and tried dyeing it in cochineal with a citric acid modifier and then doing an iron post mordant with rust water.
What I Found Out: The fact that scouring wool to remove the lanolin will make your house smell like wet sheep is one of those super obvious things that you don’t think about until you walk into your kitchen and it’s super obvious. Regardless of what the pictures in my dye book look like, cochineal with citric acid does not produce a nice crimson red. It produces crayon box red, shifting to orange if you get too much acid. I need to never do that again, unless I plan on an iron post mordant, which results in an absolutely lovely shade of chocolate brown. People who say ‘just add a couple tablespoons of rust water to a lot of water’ have some super strength rust water. Be ready to add at least a quarter of the jar. Also, leaving part of the yarn in the rust water for fifteen minutes will give a far more subtle variation in colour than you might expect, but it’s definitely darker and a bit duller.
AND THEN….
…there’s this disaster. Pray for us. And if you get into dyeing? The second you see a package of yarn that looks like it might tangle during dyeing, rewind it. Do not take the risk.
