Knitting and onion skins
Here is the onion skin-dyed yarn drying on the line. Yummy colour, isn’t it?
Here it is dried and ready to use:
The colour is actually closer to the top picture.
And here is some more yarn being brought to a simmer – this has a mishmash of St Johns wort, the remains of the onion skin dyebath and a couple of nettle teabags which I chucked in for good measure! Talk about unscientific… The yarn has been mordanted with copper.
It actually turned out a mid brown colour and is drying upstairs as I type. Photo later.
Here is the half knitted to-be-felted bag. I have still got about 30 rows to do and the yarn is disappearing at an alarming rate!
You will notice I have tweaked the blog colour a bit and made a few changes and additions to the sidebar. If you find it isn’t behaving itself for you, do let me know.
Love the colours Liz and also the changes to your blog are very nice.
I’ve been saving up onion skins to try some dyeing but not sure how to do it any chance you can put a tutorial up on your blog.
Fab roving Liz! You going to spin it too?
Fabulous Liz, such lovely colours
Look forward to seeing the felted bag – I am wanting to do this but haven’t enough patience at present. Lovely colour from the onion skins.
Love the onion skins Liz, the copper mordant has made the colours ……yummy!
Best Wishes
Maggie
Thank you, everyone, for your comments!
The bag is in the washing machine as I type – I’ve done as you said, Helen – it’s had a 60 degree one and now I’ve been emboldened and put it on a 90 degree one. But I keep jumping up every few minutes, fingers poised over the stop button!
It was actually alum with the onion skins, Maggie – the copper one went into the St Johns Wort bath – it came out a mid brown colour.
The roving is what I’m knitting into the bag, Sally – and I used nearly all of what I have dyed… it was disappearing at a very alarming rate!
Susan, I’ll try to put a tutorial up on my blog but I’ll have to wait till I do some more dyeing and take some photos. I got the ‘recipe’ from Gill Dalby’s book, Natural Dyes, Fast or Fugitive.
nice, really nice bag