Serious about Naturally Dyeing | WIP {Knitting}

Wednesday 29 October 2014


This is the second skein that I dyed naturally (and using another kit from SpinCityUK). The result is totally unexpected - in a very pleasant way, of course. I thought it was going to be dark (very dark) - and well no, there are shades of darker green of course, but the overall effect is quite soft and light green. 

In fact I left the dyeing process much longer this time than the last (I posted about the result here), but once I saw the actual colour, I knew exactly what I wanted to make out of it, and I started as soon as the yarn was dry - mittens using this pattern, it is simple but has a bit of texture to it - also it is quite a versatile pattern. And it should be a quick project. 




Compared to the previous kit I bought, the yarn is much thicker - you don't get to choose the yarn in the kit, so that is already a bit of a surprise of course. 

I will naturally dye more yarn (on a one skein scale still), and not use a kit anymore and have a bit more control over the process and elements. The kits were a great start though - and I cannot recommend them enough. 

So just you can see by what I mean by the unexpected, here is a picture of the dyeing jar. You may notice that instead of mixing the dyeing stuff with the yarn, I made some muslin bags filled with the dye stuffs. I am not sure whether this is why the colour is less saturated, but again looking at the jar the outcome was unexpected. 



Where is the green?? Where has the dark colour gone? A bit more work needs to be done - in the meantime I shall get on with some knitting and look forward to new mittens. 

Linking up to Ginny's today

6 comments:

  1. Those mittens will look great with that yarn. It's very pretty. Dyeing yarn is so much fun, especially when you don't know what your outcome may be.

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  2. Maybe its because there is less sunlight at this time of the year? (If I remember correctly, you're doing solar dyeing, right?) In any case, the outcome is very pretty! I'm really tempted to try this natural dyeing... Maybe next Summer?

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  3. I remember my friend and I stirring all this gunk in a bucket, we used gathered leaves but I have not idea now what we gathered, just that it smelt a lot and the colour was so washed out we never did it again.

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  4. I think the color is wonderful. It's nice that the dye kit is offered. It's a nice way for somebody new to dying to get started. I would like to dye yarn someday. I've only ever attempted to dye fabric but I enjoyed it.

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  5. Ooh! What a perfect green! It's lovely.

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  6. The colour of your yarn is super beautiful! Well done Nat, great result!

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