Sorry for not getting this one out for you guys on time... I managed to fall alseep with my computer in bed as I was about to start writing up my adventures with tea dyeing (so LAC members, please excuse me for just sitting there, silently all night).
So yes, tea dyeing adventures! I've been procastinating these last couple of days, doing yarn dyeing instead of making dishcloths that I really need to finish up by tomorrow... I've been wanted to do tea dyeing for a long time now, so I just jumped into it yesterday. I dug out three skeins of white (or "nature"), two of which were Safirgarn, a 100% new, pure wool and one Drops Karisma, 100% superwash wool.
With good help of my drying rack, I got them all winded up in loose skeins and tied up using some scrap acryllic.
I decided to try the three "main" tea types, black, green and herb. I got a bunch of tea, and I've stuffed a whole cabinet with boxes and bags of tea...to Bård's annoyanse. With this tea dyeing, I got to clean out the cabinet, sort through all my tea and clear out alot of them. Since I wanted to get a vibrant result as possible, I picked out a good bunch of tea bags for each type.
I didn't have too much green tea, so I ended up using some loose leafs for that.
I started with boiling up about 1 liter water (0,26 gallons), adding some vinegar to get the acid in there that binds the colors (I just poured some in, didn't mind to measure it up), and started to heat it up while adding the tea.
I let it sit for a while and when it started to boil, and the tea had soaked for a good time, I took the bags out and dunked the yarn in there.
When I had gotten it all cowered and soaked in tea, I took the teabags and put them on top of the yarn, letting it sit like this for about 15 minutes while it was barely boiling.
Turned the heat down, and let it again sit for 5-10 minutes before I removed the tea bags. The yarn I put in a plastic container after I drained most of the water out of it, to then cool down before I poured luke warm water over it, being careful to match the temperature of the yarn.
Looks like noodles, right?
Then I rinsed and repeated for the two others, it took some time, but I did get as vibrent colors as I could have gotten. Most of the tea I used was Lipton and pretty old so that may have killed the colors some. The green tea gave me a lighter beige color, which I was expecting from the black tea (which turned out warm, middle brown), but I can't complain too much on those two. The herb was more dissapointing though. I was expecting a more pink-ish brown color, but it ended up being more brown/grey. I also used the Karisma on that one, my favorite brand out of the two I used, so I wish I'd dunked that one in the black one instead.
The fun thing though, they all go really good together! I know for certain that I'll have to use these three together in a project some time!
They are more or less dry, so I'll probably get them winded up tonight
