Friday, December 25, 2009

wool dyed with red onion skins in an old iron pot

Open ended mittens knit with this yarn, the lightest green looks gray but it's not in real life.
The turkish spindles on the right have the last bit of the wool from the exhaust bath of the red onion dye bath. The rusty brown yarn on the left is the first out of the dye bath, the middle two are the green I wanted and the lighter green on the spindles last.

The yarn from the red onion skin dye. On the right, the first batch and the two others from the second batch. the third batch, the lighter wool below isn't spun yet.


It took a long time to save all the red onion skins but I finally got enough, then I wanted to use an iron pot to get a green color instead of red. While traveling out west I bought a shadow box type picture of a little tapestry loom with different dye stuffs exhibited and the different colors rendered from these dye stuffs. One was a green yarn from red onion skins. I was on the hunt for how to get green from red onion skins and was told this was how. Well it worked fairly well, the first wool out of the pot was a rusty brownish (maybe I should have scrubbed the rust from the old pot?) the second batch of wool from the same dyebath was the desired green and the light green in the foreground is from the exhaust bath.
Alot of fun, I have it all spun except the last light green. I need to take picks of the yarn.






The first batch on the left, the second on the right front, the lighter exhaust bath batch back right.





The colors are a little clearer here?














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