Cochineal.

If it has not become perfectly clear, I am a novice dyer.  For a long time I have flirted with the idea of dying.  I just had no time and or place for it in my life.  With small kids, I did not want any chemicals around them, as they grew so has my curiosity with dyes.  I LOVE the idea of natural dyes.  The gardener in me LOVEs the idea that I can grow stuff in my yard that will dye my fibers.  It’s like planting seeds… it’s magic.  I am also lucky to have a friend who is an AMAZING natural dyer and is willing to answer my endless questions and to hold my hand virtually while I play in the world of color.

I have had two 100g bundles of undyed superwash/nylon fiber in my stash for 6ish years…. it might be more, boy does time fly.  Anyway, I have been spending so much time production spinning thanks to my oldest that I decided it was time to pull it out and dye it.  I mordanted it with the other yarns last month.  Before dyeing, I put this fiber and 2 white skeins of the CVM in a bucket of water to become wet. (that sounds silly, but they need to sit in water for a couple of hours to make sure all the fibers have had a chance to absorb the water pre dying)

My good friend and natural dyer Ric Rao passed along some of his cochineal.  For those who do not know, cochineal is a beetle that is used to produce red dye.  It is indigenous to Mexico and was domesticated by the natives there hundreds of years before Columbus came to the Americas.  I love the idea of domesticating a beetle.  It eats prickly pear cactus.  There is still a wild version, and they are super tiny.  You could try to harvest them….. I will just buy mine.

I used the recipe in Harvesting Color: How to find plants and make natural dye, by Rebecca Burgess.  She says to use 1 part cochineal to two parts wool.  Luckily I had a bit more than 100g cochineal and 200 g of the wool.  The first step is to crush the cochineal in a mortar and pestle.  I then put the crushed bugs into a nylon stocking and added it to my filtered water.  Ric told me filtered water is important with cochineal as the chlorine makes the color come out pale and insipid.  I wanted a deep crimson.  I also added 3Tablespoons of white vinegar to the water this should push the color towards crimson.

Following the method in the book, I brought the pot up to a low simmer for 30 min then cooled it for 15 and repeated this 3 times.

At the end of the 3rd cooling cycle I added my fiber and brought the pot just under a simmer for an hour.  I then took out my fiber.  It’s AMAZING!

Then I put two of my CVM skeins that were pre-mordanted and let them simmer and sit in the exhaust pot.

So far cochineal is my favorite dye I have done.  It turned out just like it was supposed to.  (that is always a bonus for me) and the color is just stunning!

As an aside, while I was waiting for pots to boil yesterday I decided to use some iron to modify the color on my CVM skein I dyed with Cota.

This picture makes it look more washed out than it actually is.  It’s a greenish khaki color.  Not quite olive drab.  Like the original gold, this color is growing on me.  To do an iron afterbath, you use 2% of the dry weight of fibers of ferris sulfate dissolved in water.  Again, I wet my fibers first and then I brought them up to a simmer in the iron water solution.  I simmered for about 15 min. Jenny Dean’s book suggests 30 min, but I was afraid the fibers would go towards brown if left that long.