Poke berry dyed yarn

Poke Berry Dyed Yarn

Ripe poke berries were picked during the first week of October. 

This is mordanted with acid.  Published reports of poke berry dyed yarn on the web use 56% acetic acid 4 oz per 1 ½-2 gallons of water.  Because I didn’t have 56% acetic acid, I did a back of the napkin calculation and came up with the final concentration being somewhere between 1 and 2% acetic acid.  Vinegar is 4-5 % acetic acid.  My white vinegar was 5 % acetic acid, so I used it at a 1:2 concentration, 1 part acetic acid to 2 parts water.

The first skeins I dyed  were mordanted with the 1:3 dilution of acetic acid.  Skeins were placed in pot in the acetic acid solution and this was brought to a low boil, the yarn was then simmered for a further 2 hours while the berries were prepared.

In other published reports of poke berry dye, poke berries were used at 4:1 to 5:1 concentration for the richest colors.  I had 2 lbs (900g) of very ripe poke berries and 224 g of yarn in 3 different skeins.  This is a 4:1 ratio.  Published reports suggested that the dye takes best in acid solutions and can be removed in basic solutions.  So, it is generally suggested that the berries are extracted in an acid solution.  1 used roughly the same 1:2 concentration, perhaps erring a little more generously toward the acid than this.  I mashed the berries with about 3 cups of acid solution.

After mordanting for 2 hours, I added the berry acid solution directly to the pot of mordant and yarn, forgetting to strain the skins and seeds out.  I brought the temperature of this combination up to 150 degrees and held it there for another hour.  Then I turned off the heat and let it sit overnight.

The next morning I removed the yarn from the dye pot.  There was plenty of dye left in the pot, so I saved it.

The dyed yarn was rinsed extensively and then given a final rinse with a Eucalan bath to neutralize the fiber.  This produced a deep red yarn. 

From right to left: Jacob, mohair/wool 80/20, Blue faced Leicester 

2^nd pass Poke berry dye.

Because I had extra dye left and wanted to try an alum mordant.

These skeins were first mordanted for 2 hours in 10% w/w alum at a simmer.   They were then rinsed several times and mordanted again for an hour in 1:2 vinegar water solution at simmer.  The remaining dye was strained this time and added to the mordant pot containing the diluted vinegar and the temperature was brought up to 150 degrees for approximately 2 hours with occasional stirring.  These skeins were then removed from the dye pot and rinsed with water until cleared, then soaked for 30 minutes in a Eucalan bath to neutralize the fiber.  This produced a pink yarn.

From right to left: Jacob, mohair/wool 80/20, Blue faced Leicester.  

As you can see, in both methods, the Jacob yarn had a more variable uptake of dye across the fibers.

Finished tree wall hanging, not mounted.

Piece in Progress 4: Mostly finished

Need to do the finishing work.  It's a wall hanging.   I might add in a few more ripples on the bottom, and I'm trying to decide if I like the leaves on the right most tree, but it's mostly done.  It's about the size of your average throw, so maybe 35 inches x 60 inches approximately.

In my opinion, clipping and weaving in yarn ends is an excellent time to try to decide if you need to tweak something.

How do you hang up a big knitted piece?  I'm thinking I can use this.  It's deer fencing.  It's think nylon with good tensile strength that seems to disappear in the background.  I'm thinking I can attach it to this, then suspend the deer fencing. 

Piece in progress: Part 3

So, I was going to start knitting up the ghost trees.

Then, I discovered this:

Not quite enough yarn.  Luckily, I spun this yarn out of this:

and I have a lot more of it.

I can make a lot of yarn from this.


So, back to our ball of yarn.  This is a 2 ply yarn.  Which simply means that 2 smaller yarns are twisted together to make a bigger yarn.



This is a 2 ply yarn spun from a long draw.  Long draw is a way of making fluffy yarn, also known as woolen yarn.  As opposed to worsted yarn, which has a smoother surface and shows off the knit stitches better.  My long draw is not as pretty or as even as the long draw in the video.  Of course, I have not carded this wool, just washed it and am spinning it from the lock which will give a different result than using carded wool.

First ply, long draw.

Two ply simply means that we're going to take 2 threads like this and twine them together, like in the picture below.

After about 8 or 10 hours of this, you get yarn!

Finished product

You can see the colors better on the picture below.  This yarn is mostly white with some silvery grey throughout it.  I did nothing special to enhance the colors.  Mostly, I just grabbed a hunk of fiber and spun it out, then randomly plied things together.  You can see the colors better in the picture below.

This yarn will make up most of the ghost trees.  The nice thing about having this whole fleece is that if I need more yarn, I can make it.

Piece in progress: Part 2, the trees continue

So, I'm just a little ahead of where I was when I unraveled the background.  The first tree is pretty much back to normal and I've started leafing out tree number 2.  For those who were dying to know, this is how you leaf a tree in knitting.

I started with creating some branches for the background and adding some leaf patterns on the side of them.  These leaves are pretty subtle, but it doesn't matter, because they're background.

Then, you knit all these little leaves.  These are going to sit on top of the branches.  The tails are left on so that one can attach them to the branches and the background.

little leaves, looking for a home

One then arranges leaves on the branches until it looks right.  Looking at it, I still need to make some more leaves.

leaves sitting on branches, but not yet attached

Piece in progress

This is a description of the piece in progress.  I probably won't do a separate post for this piece, just add on to this post randomly as I see fit.  This is for the friends and relatives who say "I'm not sure how that comes out of your head."  Well, it's kind of hard to describe, but here you go.


So it started with playing with wave shapes. And then you need to make the decision on whether this is going anywhere.

So then I decided that the river needed a bank and of course, there should be trees. The trees would also need some leaves, so I decided to make some leaf colored yarn, because it's easy to become distracted.

This is spun out of wool in the 2 different colors of green and silk in the lightest green.

Voila!  Leaf colored yarn.





Much of the background was knitted at NAVC during sessions. This is a perfect time to do stockinette because one really doesn't need to look at the work much. Just knit, knit, knit. I was going for a feeling of a bank of a stream and a vanishing background. But it was difficult to get the trees to lay flat on the ripples of the background.

So I let that problem stew for a bit and stared working on leaves for the trees

Then I decided that I didn't think the background was working so this happened:

After an interminable amount of stockinette redo, I ended up with a background that felt right. Sometimes simpler is better.  Now the trees need to be reattached.

Overly Honest Artist Statement

ooooh, pretty colors.  oooh, soft.    must play with the yarn.  Ooooh,  I like yarn.  and knitting.  and soft fuzzy yarn.  oooh.  sheep good.