cactus flowers

My friend Pat gave me a bunch of frozen cactus blossoms to experiment with.  She has an Orchid Cactus.  I covered the flowers in white vinegar in a jar and left them overnight.  I then heated the flowers vinegar mixture to a boil and took it from the stove.  After steeping awhile I removed the flowers and put in some yarns (they're mostly wool).  I'm very pleased with the results!  Who would have thought the colour would be so strong.  There were quite a few flowers.  I didn't use any mordant and rinsed them out thoroughly afterwards.  I want to use the dye mixture with something else.  Let me know if you're experimenting with natural colours by commenting below.

Dyeing yarn with natural materials

A few months ago a friend gave me some white wool yarn to dye naturally.  I wanted to use dye materials easily found at a grocery store.  I've finally gotten around to it and here are the before and after pictures.  I started out with white woolen yarn, some with a bit of nylon in it or other fibre.

So far I've used turmeric powder, frozen wild blueberries and dried hibiscus flowers to colour the yarn.  The green was made with a mix of turmeric powder and blueberries and the orange/brown was made with a mix of turmeric and hibiscus.  I used alum to fix the colours.

I still have a bit of white yarn left and I'm deciding what to try next.  Apparently avocadoes skins and pits make a nice pale peach/pink colour. And black beans make a nice blue colour but I already have blue. Hmm we'll have to see.  I'm hoping my friend will knit something with it.  Thanks for stopping by!