Adventures in Dying

The other day I tried out dyeing some roving for the first time with my friend Liz. I had been meaning to try it for awhile now, but crazy things have been freaking me out. I kept reading books and websites that talked about how you need pots that can only be used to dye, crazy chemicals, and all that crap. Plus since I'm a spinner, I wanted to dye things like wool roving, which every freaking article about dyeing says that wool is like, the pickiest type of fiber in the world. So needless to say, I had been quite terrified about dealing with it all. Liz, however, is very comfortable with dyeing things, so I was more than happy to experiment with her by my side.I had gotten a ton of free fiber from a coworker, so I had plenty of stuff to experiment with, and since Liz knew what she was going, I didn't mind the fact that there was a slim possibility of me screwing it up (I'm special like that). Liz found a website that talked about using natural dyes, which was pretty awesome, and it all seemed really easy. A good chunk of natural dyes require mordants, which are basically horribly toxic chemicals needed to make the dye work, which in my opinion seems to kind of defeat the purpose of using a natural dye instead of a commercial chemical brand. We ended up going to the grocery store down the street, and we bought spinach, beets, paprika, chrysanthemum tea, green tea, and this weird spice called achiote to dye with.

For the plant dyes, which in our case was the spinach and beets, we took our wool and yarn and simmered them in a mix of 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water. We let this go for an hour or so while we got the other dyes ready. For the vegetable dyes, we just chopped up the veggies and let them simmer in a huge pot of water for an hour in order to get the maximum color out. The spice dyes were much easier to prepare. The fiber needed no preparation other than soaking them in water before placing them in the dye bath, and the dye baths we just dumped the spice or tea in a big pot of water and let them simmer until the color was distributed.

Once the dye baths were ready, we stuck the fiber in and let them simmer for an hour, and then turned them off and let the sit overnight. The dyebaths turned some really awesome colors, but it was weird how the fiber didn't always pick that up. The next day, we took the fiber out, rinsed them until the water ran clear, and hung them up to dry. My roving is still a bit damp, but as soon as its dry I'll take some pictures and post that. I can, however, say a few things about the whole dying process. The natural dyes are pretty awesome, and I do want to do them again, but in the future I might leave it just for yarn and not the roving. Some of my roving seemed to felt together a little bit, but I think I can get it all out with carding it. The spices also kind of got everywhere in the fiber, or at least the ones that didn't dissolve in the water. I'll stick to ones that dissolve (like tumeric) or just forget them and use dyes that are larger and easier to fish out. I'm going to dye this weekend with the knitting instructor at my work though, and she knows how to dye roving so I might be able to figure out how to get it not to felt. We'll see though!