Yarn Dyeing - Helen Deighan Dyes (Rinse Water)

I used the rinse water from dyeing the 100% Blue Faced Leicester yarn from Tall Yarns to dye some undyed wool. I didn't have time to undo the ball of wool, so I dyed it as is and left it over night. The following morning I carefully squeezed out all the excess water and put it out to dry for the better part of the day (it was nice and warm outside so the outside dried fairly quickly) before unraveling it carefully and hanging it by the fireplace on a hanger to dry out further. By the next morning it was nice and dry.

Yarn Dyeing - Helen Deighan Dyes

Yarn Dyeing - Coffee

Yarn Dyeing - Blueberry / Cherry Tea

Used two bags of Blueberry Tea and one bag of Cherry Tea to dye 30g of wool. The actual colour is more heather than shown in the photo, will still need to think what I'm going to be using it for as it's a very small amount.

Yarn Dyeing - Wild Water Mint Leaves

This weekend I decided to try some more dyeing. This time I used about 280g of the white wool I have lying around to dye with Wild Water Mint Leaves (plenty of them at the farm). This time I mordanted the yarn first using alum powder seeing as I'm going to be using this yarn for socks most likely, as my mum is really enjoying the two pairs I've knit her already.

The colour came out a yellowy green which I'm really liking a lot, so I'll use about 100g for a pair of socks for my mum and the rest I might just use to make a cute little purse featured in Simply Knitting issue 65 (pg 61)

Yarn Dyeing - Stinging Nettles

Having 12 skeins of white undyed wool (left in the picture) lying aroudn the house I decided to try my hand at dyeing using natural products. Seeing as they are plenty of stinging nettles around the farm, I picked enough to fill a aluminium kettle (capacity of about 1.5 liters) and then added some fresh spring water from the pond that was overflowing. I boiled the nettles in the water for about an hour, removed all the leaves and plant matter left, making sure to sieve it to have minimal particles left in the water. I had about 15-20g left over from a pair of socks I'd knitted and added that to the water after it had cooled down, and then brought it back to the boil for another hour. At the end of that, I left the wool to cool in the water and when it was nice and cool I gently squeezed out any excess water and then hung it out to dry during the night. Seeing as it was so very little yarn, I decided to make a nice little bag/purse for putting all my stitch holders in and then used the original yarn (white) to sew some little flowers on it.