Dying for tea
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Monday 20th July 2009
Part One
When I was a child, I had a cotton sweater I loved to wear. It was bright white, short sleeved, and every time I wore it, I spilled something on it. Tea, Coke, orange juice, ketchup, more tea, I never wore the thing for a full day. We called it the Fated Sweater and Mum bleached it viciously every time I wore it. But what if you spilled the tea on purpose?
I had a cunning plan to dye some handspun yarn before knitting with it. The final product would be spun, plied, dyed, and knitted by me. There happens to be on hand a small skein of handspun greyish-white mohair, a kerchief pattern for the right amount of yarn, and some black tea. In my house there is always tea.
According to one source, tea is a substantive, or direct dye, and needs no mordant. According to another, I need to follow the dye-bath with a cold water fixative to make it permanent. The forums on Knit Picks said to skip the whole fixative and mordant thing but pre-soak in water. Yet another said to pre-soak in a 4 to 1 mix of cold water and vinegar. Colour me confused.
I decided to go for the simple approach: soak the yarn in three cups of cool water with a smidge of Eucalan, brew up a nice bowl of hot tea, add yarn, and walk away.
Part 2 coming soon
Tuesday 21st July
Part Two
Before dying the yarn, I soaked it in cool water with a smidge of Eucalan. I brewed tea for 30 minutes in a pyrex bowl with five plain black tea bags and boiling water. If you were drinking this, it would be strong and bitter from the tannins. The tea bowl went in the fridge to cool off after it was done brewing so the yarn went into cool tea.
Hubby saw it in the tea bowl and thought it was something horrible. It could look pretty gross if you didn't know it was just yarn and tea! The yarn sat in its tea bath overnight to maximise the dye effect. I'm expecting a slight tie-dye effect around the skein ties, and non-uniform colouring. I could probably have used a bit more water to brew the tea. I'm hoping it doesn't felt, but planning to re-skein it when it's dry.
Since the yarn wasn't bright white to start with, I'm hoping it will pick up more brown colour, ideally it would turn a rusty tan or dark beige.
Thursday 23rd July
Part Three
The yarn sat in its tea bath overnight Sunday and most of Monday to maximise the dye effect. Then it was rinsed off in cold water and hung up to dry. Drying took another day, and the end result on Tuesday was this:
There's some colour variation across the skein, which is what I wanted, and it's a pleasant tan colour. Not sure how colour-fast the tea is, but there's no way it would go through a washing machine so I think it's safe. It still has the mohair shine to it and I'm pleased at how well it's stood up to the extra abuse. The skein ties were originally pastel green and those dyed up well too. Compare this with the skein's original colour!
It took at three or four rinses for the water to run clear and surprisingly, the end product doesn't smell of tea. This is definitely an experiment to try again. Next time I'll use an alum mordant before dying, recipes online seem to be 10% alum, 5% of either tartaric acid or cream of tartar, both by weight of the yarn to be dyed. I have a skein of white Cormo handspun just sitting in the spinning box...