Trying Wine-Dyeing

The other night I was having a glass of wine after work. The bottle had been opened a few days prior, was half-full, and the wine seemed just on the verge of being totally un-drinkable. So I settled down on the couch, put on The Simpsons, poured myself a glass... and almost immediately fell asleep.

So, here I was this afternoon with some sour old wine. boo. I decided maybe it would be fun to try using said wine to dye some yarn. I couldn't really find any information about it online but I felt like I'd heard about people doing this before so I just decided to go for it.

I pulled out some nice worsted weight un-dyed 100% wool yarn. I got this yarn at a good price so I didn't mind if I got a funky result.

I also had this big container of mordant in the craft room. Someone gave it to me a while back but I haven't tried it yet so I decided to use this as well. This mordant is alum, it's one of the least toxic mordants, this is lucky for me because I accidentally breathed some in when I opened the container. Seriously.

If you're wondering what mordant is, you can click here.

And the star of the show, the gross old wine! I was ready to begin.

I dissolved some alum in a bowl of hot water and added the yarn. I let this sit for about half an hour, then strained out the liquid.

I poured all the wine over the yarn and then added just enough hot water so that all the yarn was submerged. I let this sit for about an hour but it seemed like the color wasn't really taking. I transferred everything into a pot and cooked it on the stove until it was just about to boil. I was hoping the heat would help set the color. After letting the yarn cool a bit I rinsed it and hung it up to dry.

Anyway, the final result of this little project isn't very exciting:

The yarn on top is the wine-dyed skein. The one on bottom in un-dyed. They're different, but not very different. I don't mind the color, it's sort of a really pale dusty lavender, but I think I'll probably dye it again to get something darker.

After doing a bit more research I found out that I should have boiled the wool with the alum and also some cream of tartar. Then I should have let it dry before dying it. But I didn't have any cream of tartar and I also wanted more immediate gratification so, even knowing what I know now, I probably would have done the same thing anyway.

So in the end, I had a skein of yarn that was a slightly different color than it had been a couple hours earlier and a kitchen that smelled like wet sheep and hot wine... I probably won't wine-dye again. At least not for a while. But I also don't see myself not finishing a bottle of wine again any time soon so I suppose that's okay.

Dear Internet,

My name is Lydia and I'm starting this little blog today for a few reasons:

-to promote my Etsy shop http://smallestfriend.etsy.com

-to organize some of my own thoughts and ideas (and hopefully be more productive)

-to share some of the knowledge I have through tutorials and knitting patterns and other things like that

-to have more motivation to take photos of things I make and do

Lately I've been really getting into Kool-Aid dying. It's really fun, pretty cheap, and a great way to try out dying with out spending a ton of money on a big dye kit and special pots and mordant and whatnot. I used this tutorial from Leethal.net to get started. You can really get some beautiful colors and it even smells good. Well, except the Mango, that one smells so weird and musty and definitely not something I would ever drink.... eww.

Some yarn drying on my little balcony

Yarn dyeing in progress using Cherry, Orange and Mango Kool-Aid

More to come soon!