Beyond Knitting
The Unpredictable Magic of Natural Dyes
Before the invention of aniline dyes in the late 19th Century, people brought color into their lives using a variety of plant parts, minerals, and insects. And this year, as part of my job as a historic interpreter at The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., we hauled out our caldrons and powders to jazz up two dozen skeins of handspun wool the old-fashioned way.
I was mostly muscle—hauling water, building fires, and maintaining mordant and dye pots at “shrimp eye” temp (about 190 degrees F), which is when the bubbles around the edges look like, well, you know.
Garry was the brains of the operation. He’s been at this for a couple of decades now and has the science of it down to a science.
This is Garry.
But all of that knowledge doesn’t guarantee expected outcomes. When you are using pigments extracted from Mother Nature’s offspring, leave space in your heart for surprises.
Like this year’s attempt at using amaranth from the gardens.
I hacked up the amaranth to get it in the pot—and because it was fun.
After a simmer, the resulting liquid was a gorgeous garnet. I skimmed out the limp, gray remains of the amaranth. We dropped in a quarter of our mordanted yarn, watched it take up the pigment and turn scarlet, and decided we were geniuses.
(Mordants are a whole other conversation but know that we used alum and tin to open up the fibers to get the pigment to stick. We did half the skeins in tin; the other half in alum.)
When we pulled the yarn out later, the color was best described as blah. It wasn’t red. It wasn’t pink or taupe or putty. It was the color of a generic Band-Aid.
Surprise.
I didn’t snag a picture of it because 1) ew and 2) we over-dyed all of it with one of the other three dyes we had going: turmeric, onion skins, or cochineal.
While the turmeric and onion skin skeins turned out great, it was the cochineal that sparked joy.
Dried cochineal kind of looks and feels like gravel.
One of my favorite ways to blow visitors’ minds is to talk about cochineal, a dye ingredient that is still in food, cosmetics, and Campari. They are tiny beetles who live on prickly pear cacti.
Cochineal has been used for centuries by indigenous people. When the Spanish colonized Mexico and South America in the 16th Century, they brought the bugs back to Europe. From there, cochineal became a rich man’s dye and colored religious vestments and military uniforms.
Fun fact: when we talk about the British Red Coats, cochineal made them red. Well, the officer’s coats anyway. Enlisted men wore jackets dyed with madder root, which is much cheaper and more of an orange.
Thanks to the internet, we didn’t have to harvest our own beetles. We did measure them out, pour them into some fabric pouches, and steep them in hot water.
Then we added the mordanted yarn and shrimp-eyed it for an hour or so.
The result was interesting.
Rinsed until the water ran clear and left in the sun to dry.
Despite going through the same process, each skein asserted its own personality. The different sheep breeds, the hands of the different spinners, the tender magic of natural dyes all played a part. Each is lovely in its own way.
But I do have a favorite.
This little guy was tossed into the pot with about ten minutes left in the day, just to see what would happen. It is the most tender of pinks and it makes me swoon.
Surprise.
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Great article!
Ohhhh I’d just love a sweaters quantity of the last little guy! The colour is possibly pink perfection.
Sounds like so much fun! Seems as if plant dying is always a science experiment. I recently purchased yarn dyed, in part, with cochineal and love the color, different than the colors shown but in the same color family. No doubt the yarn base also plays a role. Thanks for the article.
Our farm has an excess (wretched, indeed) of black walnut trees. A few years ago, my husband and I did two batches of local wool dying with the simmered walnut hulls and onion skins. The resulting yarn was knitted up with an undyed skein into a gorgeous shawl that I wear on special occasions when I need something VERY warm.
Might be time to experiment with some of our other locally produced plant materials!
Great story. Great insights into dying and history. The pink was beautiful .
Thank you
Those skeins hanging in the sun to dry make me swoon! What a beautiful photo and interesting read. Love the history! On a trip to Peru, my husband and I visited Indigenous weavers. Their dye pot was also “shrimp-eyeing”. Cochineal is native to the area. We learned it was used as a lipstick. Just crack a shell and swipe across the lips. Such a vibrant red!
I have such fun experimenting with dyeing with plants in my yard. After mordanting with alum, my purple bearded iris blossoms gives a lovely teal color! And wild yarrow yields bright yellow. Its an addictive fun. The range of the cochineal colors is beautiful.
What a fun article ! IAM always fascinated by natural dyes and their unexpected results !
Once again, you have provided fabulous article. I have dived into natural dies several times. my surprises, including the beautiful pinks coming from avocado pits, and the gorgeous yellows from Birch leaves.
What fun to follow your dying adventure! I’m one of the merry band of indigo dyers from last December at MDK and I love such fun color-filled (or not!) stories about working with fiber and fabric. Keep us in the loop about what you do with your dreamy pink.
I never heard the “shrimp eye” description before. I love it— it will help me when I do my next dye pot. It is always fun to see what colors emerge. I too have a black walnut tree dropping its bounty now. I am competing with the neighborhood squirrels but there are enough walnuts to share. Lovely cochineal colors.
So interesting. And to me, all those colors remind me of shrimp! (Except your favorite which is more like a beachy shell.)
A LOVELY beachy shell, I might add:).
Of course. 🙂
I’d never heard the term ‘shrimp-eye’ but what came to my mind was that the pot was low to the ground so shrimps (i.e. children) could see into the pot without getting dangerously close. I can make up the most amazing stories in my head — and instantly!! And so not-what-the author-intended!! Oh well. Entertaining for me.
Enjoyable read
I’ve been fighting the urge to start dying yarn. This did not help
Sorry?
It’s great fun, as long as you aren’t too hung up on the color you wind up with.
At the crossroads of biology and chemistry with a drop of yarn into the mix…
Now wait for the emerging surprise! Thank you for this blooming interlude.
Great to dip ones fingers and mind (figuratively speaking) into something I am not going to try physically…
My favorite bit of dye magic involves dandelions. With no modifier, the yarn is bright yellow. With a washing soda rinse, the yarn turns bright orange! With a bit of iron in the rinse, the yarn turns green. All beautiful!
So, one of my favorite things about the Expeditionary school my children attended was that they did this! It was the fall semester, and they went with a local dyers’ guild to harvest plants, they treated the (local) alpaca skeins, they overdyed, they dried…they chose different plants and did it again! I was lucky enough to get one of the skeins and I knit it into a beanie for their exhibition night. I was lucky to be asked to chaperone many of the trips, and I learned so much!
Your yarns came out so gorgeously colored! The pink is cute, but my eye is drawn to the two oranges on the right! I love how rich they look!
Love this!
This is so interesting! Natural dyes are fascinating and I love to see the variation
I experimented with natural yarn dyeing last summer and loved it. Marigold flowers, onion skins and avocado pits were the materials I used. I’ve knit two pairs of socks with the yarns I have dyed and still have some left for one more pair. My internal rule is to not dye more yarn until the previous stash is almost gone. Otherwise I’d be collecting yarn and not knitting it. Madder root is next on my list to try…though I will have to order it. Botanical Colors is a great company for dyeing supplies.
The tender pink makes me swoon too! I need a cosy sweater made of that color yarn. But all the brighter colors of cochineal too…
What fun! Last year, I took a natural dyeing workshop at my local community college. We played with madder, cochineal, indigo, and I think walnut? It was such fun, and I knit my little samples into a colorwork hat.