As mentioned in my last post, I wanted to try something new for the knitting competition. If this is a very wise decision (i.e. trying something new which is quite likely to go wrong when you actually really need it to work out!) is a different question. But I read a lot on the internet about natural dyeing and it intrigued me, especially because the yarn that we are supposed to use for the competition is undyed. A little colour never hurt anyone is my motto! To sum up my experience in one sentenced: my very first time dyeing with avocados was a total fail, the second time round it worked like a charm.
But while I'm sitting here and wondering if the fumes of potassium sulfate solution are potentially poisonous I have to say it has been an interesting experiment. First of all I chose avocados to dye with because they're easily available and it seemed like you don't necessarily need an additional mordant (but I ended up using one anyways). It's also supposed to make a lovely pink/purple colour like this example shows - how mine ended up will be explained later on.
Avocado dye, part I (the fail):
So first of all I took four avocado pits and chopped them up in little pieces which was surprisingly easy. The funny thing was that as soon as they were cut open they already started oxydising and turned bright orange, quite surprising. I also kept the peel because supposedly you can make dye from it, too, but that's for a later experiment. I know it looks like I'm preparing some yummy guacamole but no, it's science!
I added some hot water and after a few minutes the colour turned orange as you can see on the pictures below. This was with two pits including the skin around it (I wasn't sure if I was meant to put it in or not).
This is the colour of the mix after about 12 hours of soaking without any additional ingredients (left) and
After having soaked the chopped up pits in water for about 24 hours I then filtered out the pits, putting them separately into a sock (yes, a sock, old but clean I may add) so that the pieces wouldn't get tangled in the yarn. I heated up the dye solution and I added the yarn that I had previously soaked in the mordant while simmering for about 1 hour on the hob. I paid attention that it didn't get to boil to avoid felting. After about 1 hour in the dye bath, the yarn had soaked up almost all the dye but unfortunately the colour was almost invisible! Even after rinsing and drying the yarn you could only detect the slightest little hint of pink, nothing like the nice, rich hue I had seen on pictures before. Meh.
Here's a picture of what the yarn looked like after the first dyeing attempt:
After this total fail I tried to figure out what I did wrong. I concluded that it was probably because I didn't boil the avocado pits properly but only soaked them, which means that I didn't extract enough of the dye from the pits to dye the yarn properly. Or, alternatively, I used bad avocados because they were not quite ripe yet (on the pictures you can see that they're very green on the inside). On the upside it was easy to overdye the first attempt since it was basically still the natural wool colour and I decided to try again. So.....
Avocado dye, part II (the success):
This time I changed my approach a little. First of all, I bought some avocados that were already over-ripe, if not to say on the verge of rotten. The market vendor at Marché du Midi probably thought I was totally stupid when selling me about 8 avocados that were basically not edible anymore but little did he know that I didn't buy them for eating, ha! And I was happy to buy dyeing material for only 1 € - a win-win situation. Peeling the lot was a bit disgusting because some of them were already kind of slimey-grey inside and partly mouldy. But it worked, so I'm not complaining.
The second thing that I did differently this time (and this might be the most important factor) is that I chopped up the pits just like before but I put them straight into the pot with water and boiled them for about 1 hour on the hob. The water turned a lot darker immediately, almost the colour of mulled wine instead of the more orange hue it had before when I used the mason jar as you can see here:
The rest of the process was the same: I mordanted (is that even a word?!) the yarn again - even though I wasn't sure if this was necessary - and put it into the dye to let it soak. I let it simmer on the stove for about 1 hour, which seems to be the magic timeframe in this process for everything, and then let it sit there over night until the next morning. That would be about 10 - 12 hours of soaking I guess. The yarn kept on floating to the top and since I wanted it to be all covered I put a little cereal bowl upside down on top of the yarn to push it down. It worked well and didn't leave any traces on the fibre.
The next morning I witnessed my first avocado-dye-yarn-miracle and it was beautiful! Even after rinsing several time almost no dye came out, it seems to be very well absorbed by the yarn. Here is the result:
To sum up this excruciatingly long post: using over-ripe avocados and boiling them on the hob does the trick and sometimes, if you don't succeed, you just have to try again. Another lesson in life learned. And here are the technical details again:
- pits of ca. 8 small avocados chopped up in smaller pieces
- used a bit more than the recommended 10 g alum to mordant 100 g of yarn
- boiled the dye base for about 1 hr
- added the yarn and simmered it in the dye bath for 1 hr
- let the yarn soak in the dye bath over night, ca. 12 hrs
Let me know if you're trying this and how it turns out!
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