Mortaine’s Blog

The piano is being moved and tuned today– yay! I try not to think about how much it costs– I think you can buy a new or inexpensive used piano for that much. On the other hand, you still have to move a used piano…. and tune it.

John and I took a break from moving last night. We went home and cooked dinner and I unpacked another box. We watched Idol (well, John watched, I half-watched while cleaning up in the kitchen and making yarn).

I finished plying the yellow yarn I’ve been working on. Man, that took a long time! I’m glad it’s done, though. Tonight or tomorrow I can put it onto the niddy noddy and set the twist. It should be a 3 ounce skein by this weekend and I can take pictures of it to post.

Last night’s dinner included fresh organic beets, which I love. John is not so much a fan, though he did like them well enough since they weren’t canned. With beets, there’s a lot of red juice everywhere, and the ends and tops and skins have just all this red stuff oozing out of them.

Hmm…. what do you do with a bright red all-natural dye?

Now, the last time I tried to dye with beets, it was a disaster. I tried dying yarn with it, and it wound up being a very pale tan (shown here– it’s the bottom right-hand yarn), which I then burned in the microwave trying another technique. I finally threw it away earlier this month.

Anyway, in the last month or so, I’ve joined and learned that, gee, what you really need for dyeing fiber is some sort of acid to bind the stuff together. Vinegar will do the trick most of the time.

So last night after dinner, I put the beet peels and ends and tops (all of which were otherwise going to be thrown away, since the compost bin isn’t set up yet) into the same Corningware dish we’d cooked them in, added about a half a cup of vinegar and a cup of water, and threw about an ounce of washed but uncarded wool in.

And I microwaved it for about 40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes or so for color.

Vinegar has become my new best friend. When I take pictures of this fiber, I’m going to have to photograph it outside in the sun so you can really see the color. It’s a really deep red-orange, almost a rust color. Very nice. I’m completely blown away by how well it dyed, actually. I totally expected it to do what happened last time and show up all pale and stuff. I have heard that beet juice isn’t entirely colorfast or lightsafe, so I’ll have to keep an eye on this and not spin it into a dishcloth or suncatcher, I suppose.

I’m now wondering how hard it would be to dye with the leftover coffee grounds….