Onion skins

Friday and today have been days to cook up onion skins and create some new yarns to work with.

The idea was to mordant with copper coins then dye with red onion skins.

Unfortunately I think I've learnt something I've suspected for some time: silk is selfish and steals all the mordant and dye. The change from the previous dyeing wasn't great, however, upon first putting the silk in the dyepot it turned yellow then proceeded to take up the brown.

They all did turn out lovely as I removed the silk early, put back the copper coins and left the wool in.

It's a lesson well learnt, but now I have some lovely yarns for next week.

What did you first knit?

Snb yesterday was a joy. Lots of people, sharing projects, ideas, yarns, problems and even finished projects. Here is the scarf of our new knitter (I think I said spinner, yesterday...probably wishful thinking on my part!) And here is her sample feather and fan. A whole morning was spent winding the yarn for her next project and she is very excited.

My show and tell for the morning was the yarn I dyed with the Red Onion skins. I didn't start with any mordanted yarn and that gave me the dark brown. The second skein was dyed with the remaining dye and some copper coins in the pot. I'm not sure the coins did much, I think I'll try a much more scientific method and actually pre-mordant properly. Unfortunately, I do have to wait for the red onion skins as Jenny at the Greville Rd Fruit supply doesn't supply as many.

I did like the colours achieved and found a pattern in one of Barbara Walker's pattern books, called 'String of Purls', which just might make a nice pattern with the two colours.