The results of my red cabbage dye experiment last month! |
The yarn came out pretty variegated but that was my own fault. I still like the colors and it's sort of a "sea glass" blue in person. I might try the cabbage again with a couple of other tricks, such as using baking soda to change up the color. My Mom *loves* the pale blue of the linen. She wants to paint her room that color!
Sadly, the avocado dye experiment last month didn't work out quite as well. This was before I even rinsed the yarn fully. Once it was fully rinsed, both the wool yarn and the linen fabric became....white again. There really wasn't a drop of color that adhered to it.
So, this time I decided to try a different method. Rather than leaving three avocado pits in a jar of vinegar and water to make a dye, I just put 14 avocado pits in a big ole soup pot with a lot of water and simmered it.
At first, it seemed like it was going the same way as the avocado vinegar experiment until I tested the PH of the water. For some reason, it was only 5! I added a lot of baking soda and got the PH at least up to 6.5.
After simmering the pits for about 3 hours, I added the wool yarn (the same one I used in the previous because, seriously, zero color), and left that to simmer for an hour before I took it off the heat. I then left the yarn in the dye pot overnight. Below is what color it is now!
In person, it's a fabulous light mauve that I'm very happy with. Also, the dye vat smells 100% better than the cabbage vat did. :-) I'll post pictures of it when it dries to see fully what color it ends up.