Skip to main content

Just Beet It - part III

Who knew that my beetroot dyeing title would become so topical, what with the demise of the "King of Pop".

In response to much interest in my beetroot yarn and debate on it's colour fastness I'm outlining how I dyed the yarn in case anyone else wants to have a go.

Most dyeing websites will tell you beetroot produces a grungy yellow colour and is not colour fast. This is probably referring to using fresh beetroot. I'm new to dyeing but will postulate that pickled beetroot juice works differently to fresh due to the pickling process.

Anyway, theories aside, this is what I did.

Ingredients:

  • I skein Zirton Treking undyed superwash sock yarn.
  • The juice/vinegar from two 710g jars of Waitrose Pickled Sliced Beetroot. The ingredients on the label are beetroot, sugar, barley malt vinegar, acetic acid, salt. I had about 2/3 of a 710g jar of beetroot vinegar.

Method:

1) Presoak the yarn in tepid water with a dash of washing up liquid until the yarn is moist. Drain off any excess water.

2) Put the end of the skein in the jar of beetroot juice, squidging the yarn with a gloved hand (saying Ow shamone in a Michael Jackson stylee if desired)so the juice penetrates the yarn. Leave to sit for about 30min.

Note: I was making a dip dyed yarn. For a solid yarn soak the whole skein in the juice. For dip dyed yarn I used dilutions of the juice for a graduated effect. The palest section of yarn looked a beautiful baby pink colour before steaming however this turned a mucky yellow after steaming.

3)Wrap the yarn in cling film or place in a thin plastic bag. Gently steam for 1 hour. Allow yarn to cool then rinse in tepid water with a splash of shampoo. Rinse again with water.

Repeat from step 2 until the yarn is the shade of orange you desire. I added a few drops of natural red food colouring to lift the orange in one section of my variegated yarn.

As I said before, I am new to dyeing so the method above is more of a guideline. Just play around and see what you come up with and above all have fun.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.

Unravelling the NHS

If you follow me on twitter you'll already know I have a healthy interest in politics. Our current government is slowly and steadily dismantling our beloved NHS (National Health Service) from one with full public accountability to one which is more dependent on profit margins rather than evidence based medicine. THIS MAKES ME VERY ANGRY. There's a lot of despair at the moment, many of us feel our government is not listening to us, the people, or experts in the field such as the British Medical Association or the Royal College of Nurses. Yesterday our unelected second house, the house of Lords, voted through the government's ill-advised health reform bill. We all felt hopeless, then I read this blog post . You should read it too. Many of us are working out what to do. How can we reverse this disastrous decision when essentially the democratic process is failing us. "The NHS reforms did not appear in either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos. They w

TOTOROOOOOOOO!

I finally handed over the Totoro hooded top to it's two year old recipient today. It also fits his four year old sister which is good as she likes Totoro too. They both looked very cute in it. We met up at the Wellcome Collection which has a lovely airy cafe and free exhibitions. The Totoro kids mum is a fellow scientist so we went round the Exquisite Bodies exhibition explaining why calves are sometimes born with two heads, how babies are made (the four year olds current interest) and lots of other science fun to the kids. If you visit the Wellcome centre with kids ask about their young investigators pack. It's really cool (I was disappointed I didn't get one) and it's free. Brilliant. The staff were really helpful and pleasantly surprised at seeing young kids enjoying a strange exhibition, rather than being freaked out by it. Personally, I did enough human dissection as part of my degree to make me not want to see another cadaver ever again, although the models wer