Dye day

So at s'n'b the other day, S gave me some "Verboten Rice" to try. In my quest to try to eat low Glycemic Idex foods, she had been telling me about this grain. It sounded FAB. And not only is the grain supposed to taste great, the rinse-water, she told me, would really get my attention. Well, being  curious is how I roll,  so I took the bait.

The rice soaked over night. This morning I awoke to this

















The most gorgeous and unexpected color of rice water I have ever seen.  It was a kind of burgundy, purple, red wine color.

 CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

I went in to the yarn vault and pulled out two skeins of vintage "Plantation Unger mercerized cotton".  "Why vintage cotton"? you ask?

1)  Why not?
2)  It will not felt up like wool if I need to heat the dye water.

I immediately grabbed "Dyes from American native Plants, a Practical Guide." a book borrowed two years ago from my other s'n'b'er K, and proceeded to do a quick search through mordants. In my brief perusal, is seemed that Potassium Hydrogen Tartrate (cream of tarter) seemed to be good for many pinks and purples, so I just went with it and made up a quick soak of a liter of water and a half a bottle of cream of tarter.  Scientific method went out the window when it came to measuring this stuff.  I DIDNT MEASURE ANYTHING.  You will find NO molar weights on here today.

While that was soaking

I did some surfing and found this article on line. Right up my alley with it's chemistry and science geekiness.  The red pigment that comes out of the black rice, just like the red color that comes out of red cabbage, is an anthocyanin.

Located conveniently at the end of this article was located a bit of info that intrigued me.  The article states that -- The main problem found with using this kind of dye/pigment was that color color-fastness, and that they autor felt that "this could be overcome by dipping the untreated fabric in weak alkali such as aqueous ammonia and then in a mordant such as alum solution." ...  

I immediately poured all of the cream of tarter solution into a glass jar, rinsed the yarn , and proceeded to make a vinegar and water soln to soak the fiber in.  I realized after immersing the fiber that I had accidentally grabbed the VINEGAR and not the AMMONIA.  F .   We also did not have alum (an alkali), so I just used the cream of tarter (acidic) solution again.  So to stay consistent, i decided to keep it all acidic.  Oh well, the show must go on.  After soaking for about 1/2 an hour, I removed the yarn, squeezed it out, and placed it back into the cream of tarter solution to soak for another 1/2 hour.  I then squeezed out the yarn and placed it in to a sauce pan of the rice water.  It remained in the rice water over an hour (we had swimming class to go to).  When I got back, I turned the stove on low.  Thank goodness I did not use wool, because I futzed around a lot with this while it was in the saucepan, and wool would have felted up like one huge blob.

I think it "cooked" for about an hour, and then I took to pot outside and hung the yarn up to dry on the clothes line.

Now, for the color-fast test.

After the yarn had completely dried in the sun, and then I rinsed it several times in cold water.  In the above photo, the yarn is still damp, and the hues are nicely saturated (no pun intended).  A bit of the color DID wash out, but I am totally pleased with the results.  Above I did not mention, but I essentially "kettle dyed" it.  During the time the yarn was "cooking" in the pot, I reduced some of the pigmented water in a separate saucepan.  I reduced about 2 cups of the rice water down to about 1/4 cup, (it was super dark and concentrated) and I poured it over the exposed yarn in the pot.  I think this helped add a deeper tonal variation in the color.

Basically, the mordant/s I used this time were acidic (Cream of Tarter and Vinegar) ... next time, I am going to try alkali (Alum and Ammonia) and see if I get different hues and better or worse colorfastness.

One interesting thing I noticed was that there was a reaction between the wet yarn and the aluminum clips on the hangar.  Where it was clipped and touching the metal, I noted a light blue grey coloration....it would be interesting to add strips of foil to the next batch... Weave them in amongst the strands as it air dries.  Next time!  Next time for sure!

Still waiting on my Old Navy order.