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dyeing wool with onion skins

I read that onion skins, both the red and the yellow variety can be used to dye wool or other protein based fibers pretty well. I’m very curious on the colors this will give and have therefore spent the last couple of months saving onion skins. I want to try out dyeing wool with onion skins!

Gathering yellow onion skins proved to be not that much of a problem. Red ones, on the other hand, were, because we appear not to be that much into eating red onions. Anyway, onion skins were saved and I’m ready to tell and show you what I did!

Materials

Collecting the required materials is obviously an important step. In my experiment, I wanted to use yellow and red onion skins in separate dye baths to see what differences in color that would yield. To make this possible I collected the papery, outer skins of the onions. I stored these in two separate paper bags, one for each color. It’s important to store the skins in a breathing container, otherwise, any moisture still in the skins may cause everything to mold.

Also, mordanting also has an impact on the resulting color, so in each dye bath, I wanted to have 1 mordanted and 1 non-mordanted skein of yarn.

To make this possible I used the following materials:

Wool yarn, 4 balls of 50 g each
Pieces of waste yarn to tie up the wool into skeins
Detergent (without enzymes)
33 g yellow onion skins (for dyeing 100 g of wool)
33 g red onion skins (for dyeing 100 g of wool)
A mordant, I used my leftover mordanting solution from my madder dye experiment
2 stainless steel pots
A sieve
Rubber gloves, stainless steel spoons
Water
A way to heat the pots, I just used my stove

a. Washing the wool

First as explained in this post I skeined up the yarn and washed it to remove any lanolin, spin oil or other debris still present on the yarn.

b. Mordanting

Mordanting of the wool is usually required with natural dyeing to ensure that the wool fibers are all opened up so that the dye can penetrate into the fiber. With onion skin dyeing this is however not really needed. Mordanting does have an impact on the resulting color though.

This is the reason I mordanted 2 of my 4 skeins of wool with an alum mordant. As written above, I used the leftover mordanting solution from my madder dye experiment. This time though, I didn’t leave it overnight at room temperature, but let it simmer on the stove for an hour.

c. Preparing the dye baths

1. An important step in dyeing wool with onion skins is of course preparing the dye baths. For each of the dye baths, I put 33 g of onion skins in the pot together with 2 L of water. This I let simmer on the stove for an hour.

2. After the full hour had passed, I used the sieve to separate the onion skins from the dye bath. The colored liquid was then returned to the pot, minus the onion skins.

3. Here you see a picture of the resulting dyeing solutions. It’s a tad hard to see because it’s just so dark, but the yellow onion one is a dark orange. The red onion skin dye is a dark red.

d. Dyeing the yarn

4. In the case your yarn has dried before getting to this step, you have to soak it first in water again. In wet wool, dye distributes itself much more uniformly. About half an hour of soaking is usually enough. If the wool is still slightly wet, you can skip to the next step of this tutorial.

5. In each of the dye baths, I have put a skein of mordanted wool as well as a non-mordanted one. I made sure to completely submerge all wool. The picture below shows the yellow onion bath on top and the red onion skin one on the bottom half.

6. I let the wool simmer for about an hour in the dye bath. Next, I let it cool down in the dye bath overnight. The picture below shows how the wool looked next morning. Do you see how dark the red onion skin dye bath and the yarn in it (bottom part of the picture) has become?

7. Rinse the wool off with lukewarm water. Rinse as long as necessary until the water runs clear. Remember to put on rubber gloves, if you do not want to stain your hands! In this picture, only the yellow onion skin dyed yarn is shown.

8. Then you can squeeze the water out of the dyed wool and hang to dry.

And this is my result from dyeing wool with onion skins, after the skeins of yarn have completely dried:

From left to right: red onion skins on non-mordanted wool, red onion skins on mordanted wool, yellow onion skins on non-mordanted wool and on the far right yellow onion skins on mordanted wool.

The mordanted colors are more bright than the non-mordanted ones. It really surprised me though, that red onion skins give green yarn!

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mustard and slate

Mustard and Slate is the shawl to knit when you just don’t want to choose… Simple or lace? Gray or Oker? Using two colors, Mustard and Slate has a simple textured body and a delightful lace edging. You can really have it all!

Knit this shawl from the top-down in one piece, starting at the neck edge with a garter tab. Mustard and Slate is finished with an edging that is knitted on sideways and attached to the live stitches of the body as it is being worked. The instructions for the edging are provided charted and written out.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€

Difficulty level

This shawl is started with a garter stitch tab. Stitches used include knit, purl, skp, k2tog and yo. This pattern is suitable for the intermediate knitter.

Size and finished measurements

One size (easily adjustable): span width of 152 cm (60 inches) along the upper edge and a depth of 75 cm (29 ½ inches), measured after blocking.

Pattern details

Gauge is not critical for this design, for the sample shawl: 13.5 sts / 25 rows = 10 cm (4 inches) over body pattern after blocking.
Pattern languages included: English and Dutch (Dit patroon omvat zowel een Nederlandse, als een Engelse versie).
Digital PDF has 4 pages for the English version and 5 pages for the Dutch version (letter size).

Materials

ONION knit Nettle Sock (70% wool, 30% cellulose; 185 m (202 yds) / 50 g) in the following colors and amounts: MC: 352 m (385 yds) / 95 g in Gray, CC: 260 m (285 yds) / 70 g in Oker. Substitute any fingering weight yarn for a similar result.
Size 4 mm (US 6) / 80 cm (32 inches) circular needles
Yarn needle
4 stitch markers to indicate the center and edge stitches

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fixing a mistake in lace knitting

This post is all about my recent confrontation with fixing a mistake in lace knitting. As you may have seen if you’re following me on Instagram or Facebook, I’ve been happily knitting along on my latest design using Nurturing Fibres Super Twist Sock in “Odette” and “humbug”. I got mine from Wol zo Eerlijk, a lovely store with lots of environmentally friendly and fair trade yarns. Anyway, there I was, in the home stretch, with only 10 more rows of edging to go before the bind off. It was then that I saw it: a mistake in my lace, 9 rows down!

When I found the mistake in the pink border of my Pink Monarda shawl pictured, I had about 320 stitches per row. So no, I was not going to rip out all that work! Instead, I dropped down only 8 stitches to the place where I made the mistake. After that was correcting the error, followed by knitting everything back up to the row I was on.

In this post, I’ll show you exactly what I did!

Helpful materials

To start, it is pretty handy to have some tools available to make fixing the mistake easier. I used the following:

A set of DPN’s (double pointed needles) in the same size as the needles used in your project, or smaller.
A crochet hook.
Some pins.
A pillow.

Fixing a mistake in lace knitting with La Visch Designs

The pillow and pins were used to make sure that your work stays exactly where you need it to be. Also, it helps to see the mistake better when pinned out, instead of all scrunched up like lace tends to be before blocking.

On to the fixing!

1. To start, I pinned out my knitting on the pillow. I did this in such a way that I could clearly see a repeat of the lace pattern that was knitted correctly, as well as the one with the mistake in it. I slipped some of the stitches on one of the DPN’s to help fixate the whole better on the pillow. Can you see in the picture below where the mistake is?

2. The mistake is in the left half of the repeat, near the 4th yarn over, counted from the needle. Can you see it? In the picture below, I have indicated it with the circle.

3. In this particular case, it wasn’t necessary to drop down the whole repeat. Instead, I only dropped the 8 stitches on the left half of the repeat. I dropped down until I reached the purl row exactly below the row with the mistake in it.

When approaching the row below the mistake, I stopped ripping back and started to carefully tink (tink = knit backward!) further back, catching the released stitches with another DPN. It is especially important to do it like this when working with very slippery yarn. If you don’t take care, the knitting may run deeper down than desired, thus increasing the amount of fixing to do.

The yarn from every row dropped, I pinned to the pillow, going from left to right. This made sure nothing got tangled, and I could easily count the number of dropped down rows. This, in turn, made it easier to see where to pick up the chart when knitting it back up.

4. Then it was a matter of knitting back in pattern. As you can see, you use the free loop of yarn, just as you would use the thread running to the ball of yarn. If you find it challenging to catch the thread correctly to pull it through a stitch, you can always use the crochet hook to assist with this.

5. Because of the way I manipulated the yarn through the stitches, some of the stitches got mounted twisted. In the picture below, you can see that the left leg of the stitch is in front of the needle, instead of at the back. This really is no problem, but it is something to pay attention to. To correct this, I knitted these twisted stitches through the back loop.

6. And here you see the result: all fixed! The loose stitches you can see next to the re-knitted stitches are because of the tension on those threads when manipulating the dropped down stitches. This should, however, correct itself during blocking. If it’s still a tad visible, you can redistribute the excess yarn a bit over the various stitches.

7. And this is how to go about fixing a mistake in lace knitting. Now on to knitting those final rows of this shawl…

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heuvel en dal

The Heuvel en Dal lacy chevron wrap is designed to give both texture and color to your outfit. Make it in greens or your favorite color combination. Heuvel en Dal is written for the size as pictured, however, the width and length are easily adjusted for further customization. This design is suitable for any lace weight or fingering weight yarn.

The instructions are both fully charted and written out. This pattern is written using American English crochet terminology.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€