Some pics about dyeing are now here in Flickr. I got a very beautiful olive green colour from the heather, which was cooked in an iron cauldron (about 3,5 hours cooking, yarn was in the heather bath only one hour).
I counted my yarn yesterday and figured out that I got more than I actually should need. Because of that I begun to dye those yarns on this morning. I have done mordanting, now the heather is cooking and I’m trying to relax a bit before beginning to dye the loom.
Because the school doesn’t have a big iron cauldron, I have to use iron vithrill for getting the green iron colour out from the heather. This is actually probably almost authentic – in the literature it’s often mentioned they have used file dust or small pieces of iron in baths made for dyeing yarn or colouring leather.
I’m dyeing the loom in the first heather bath and the weft in the afterbath. The big cauldron is made of stainless steel. I’ll dye both dyes and then add iron vithrill and put both the weft and the loom together to the iron bath. I hope the colour will be a nice one.
Now I’ll begin with my hand-spun yarns…
I did some dyeing with natural colors (various flowers and leaves, mostly) in my teen years in the summer, and I’ve been dreaming about doing that again sometime – in my memories it was a lot of fun. I used ready-spun wool, though – Pirkanmaan kotityö’s Pirkka yarn. When se meet up, it would be nice to hear your dyeing experiences and views. I could show you the yarns I dyed, as well. (I actually still have some of those still waiting to be knitted…)
I’m not a very skillful in the art of natural dyeing, but some small (the amount of yarn is not counted in) experiments have teached me now the basics. I believe you know much more about dyeing than me.
But we’ll meet at some point on the spring, I believe, let’s talk then!