Dyeing Wool Yarn with Vegetables, Fruits, & Flowers Part 1

While at Drumlin Farm I saw that they were selling yarn made from their sheep's wool. This year I saw an unbleached off-white natural (white sheep) color as well as the greyish color I bought last year (a combination of the black and white sheep wool). My first thought was that would be fun for experiments with natural dyes. I bought four skeins. Then the next week I bought three more after I did some research on dyeing wool yarn and talked to the handworks teacher at Hazel's Waldorf School. She suggested doing sun dyeing with Hazel and using onion skins. So I goggled sun dyeing and found a great blog post on Natural Suburbia. However they used food coloring instead of vegetables, so I kept looking some more. Pioneer Thinking offers some great resources including a list of what to use for each color. Lion's Brand has a neat article comparing colors that you get using a few natural dyes on wool yarn versus cotton yarn. (It got me thinking about what cotton yarn I have that I could use for a different experiment.) I also read several indepth articles on how to make natural dyes. I pinned all of these on my Children Crafts & Activities Board.

So Hazel and I went to the grocery store for dye ingredients. Ok, we went to the grocery store several times for dye ingredients. Mostly because I kept forgetting things or getting the wrong thing and some stores carried items and some did not. I also found some great large jars at The Christmas Tree Shop. I bought three of them so I have been working three at a time. On our first day, we used yellow onion skins, red onion skin and concentrated grape juice. Having read so many instructions, I soaked my yarn in water with a cup of white distilled vinegar for probably about 40 minutes while I made the dyes. I took each of my onion skins and put them in a pan with water (3 parts) and vinegar (1 part). I boiled the mixture and then let it simmer for a bit. Then I poured each one into a jar and put a skein of yarn in each one. For the grape juice concentrate, I put it in a jar with a cup of vinegar and three cups of water and then added yarn. Then we put the jars in the sun for the day.

I think Hazel was excited to do this since she actually was willing to pose in a picture with the jars.

For our second trip to the grocery store we bought more red onion. The skin from one onion was not enough to really do much. Then we went to another grocery store for beets and frozen blueberries (only because I kept forgetting them). We added more onion skins with more water and vinegar to the red onion mixture. The yellow onion skin did not seem to be doing too much to the yarn, so we gave up on it and added blueberries with water and vinegar to that mixture.

The order pictured here from left to right, red onion skins, blueberries, grape juice. We let them sit in the sun for a good part of the day. The grape juice however seemed done so I rinsed it until the water ran clear (I used the hose). Then hung it to dry. Later in the day we rinsed the other two and hung them to dry as well.

The order above is blueberry, red onion skin and grape juice. The grape juice is my favorite color thus far. To see exactly how they compare to where we started.

The blueberry and grape are to the left and then the red onion skin is slightly darker than the original skein.

To add more educational side to this activity you could discuss the history of natural dyeing. Wikipedia provides a nice history on natural dyes. It is interesting to do something that has been done for 5000 years!! Dorthea Calverley also has a nice history more having to do with pioneers of the US. I will be sharing two more days of dyeing (at least) including some more educational ideas.

To see the other days check out Day 2 and Day 3.

This is where I share...

Sharing Saturday #20

Wow, what amazing posts people shared last week. If you haven't had a chance to check them out, please go visit and see. I loved so many of the later ones. I once again had a hard time picking features. It is so hard to narrow it all down!! 

 From Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom: Cheater Quilt

A Few of My Favorites:

From Earning My Cape: Quick Paper Hand Puppets (Great idea for entertaining)

 From Reading Confetti: Disappearing Letters (Fun idea to practice tracing letters)

From Enjoying the Journey: Teaching Children Joy: Spontaneous Delight (Wonderful post to remind us to enjoy joy!!) 

From Sew Blessed: Doll Summer Swimsuits (Oh, so need to make Hazel's doll one of these!)

If you were featured please feel free to grab a featured button here to post with pride on your blog. Please go visit my co-host, Mama Mia's Heart2Heart for more features!!

From Your Hosts:

From Mama Mia's Heart2Heart: Coin Printing

From Crafty Moms Share: The Paper Princess

 Now for This Week's Party

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Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. 

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All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Outside Play & A Couple Princess Crafts

At last week's Sharing Saturday, I featured 2 Big, 2 Little's Playing with Water. I knew we had to try it and we did. Both Saturday and Sunday. Hazel loved it!! She has a water and sand table, but we found she always put the sand in the water so we made it a sand only table. We took some of the water toys from there and some from her bath for this though. We also used our colored water spray bottles that we used for snow painting this winter.

She insisted on bringing out her chair so she could sit while playing.

She had some of her kitchen toys out from her sandbox as well. She was whisking the color into the water.

Then when she got a color she didn't like anymore, she dumped the water and refilled it.

You know she enjoyed it since we had to do it again today when we played outside.

This time she got her wind-up duck working and checked to see what would float. I told her the duck wanted the water to be orange so she made him orange water.

We also had to make her a house on her swingset. The house we built at school this morning was taken down by the other kids as soon as she switched to another toy and she got really upset so I promised her we would make one outside today. I sewed the edges of these and bought large clothespins. You can see more here. We have also added her pillow pet and a blanket so she has a place to rest in her house.

She also could not wait to try out her new red chair. We had bought her one ages ago and last summer it broke, so she has been asking for a new one. We found one at Christmas Tree Shop and bought it. This is the first time I let her bring it out and opened it up for her. She was very excited about the drink holder even if her sippy cup didn't fit in it.

I know I shared this book before, The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven. It is a cute story about the adventures of a paper princess a girl draws and cuts out and then the wind blows away. The princess wants to get back to her girl and this is the adventure of getting back home. Well since Hazel is still in the scribble stage of drawing, we found these people cut-outs and bought the girl ones at AC Moore for $1. We used watercolors on them. I tried to make the dress like the forest and the tights like the night sky and the feet like watermelons, but the colors ran. I still think they came out lovely though.

My Princess

Hazel's Princess

The other night I also needle felted Hazel a new princess. I used pipe cleaners in this one for stability. She loves her.

 This is where I link up...

How We Spent a Rainy Day

So this morning we looked outside and saw a bunny in our yard. Then the male mallard came for some food. Plus we always have grey squirrels and morning doves, robins, sparrows and some finches around. Hazel was so excited to show me each of them. I love leaving food out for them so we get lots of wildlife in our yard. Then it started to downpour. We decided not to go to our class at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary even though it was not cancelled since it was on and off pouring. Plus we both felt a bit rundown from our overscheduled May, so we decided we needed a day at home.

Our Big Bad Wolf

We decided this was the perfect time to try out Lorie's (from Reading Confetti) idea on Retelling the 3 Little Pigs. When I saw this the other day, I knew we had to try it since Hazel LOVES the Three Little Pigs!! So first we went to our craft room and made the three pigs. We couldn't find our googly eyes, so we had eyeless pigs, but Hazel did not care.

Our 3 Pigs

Then Hazel wanted to paint while we downstairs so while she painted I hot glued the sticks for the stick house. Then when she finished painting we came upstairs and built the straw house and stick house and brick house.

Straw House (with some spots taped)

Stick House (with structure hot glued)

Brick House

Then Hazel put on the wolf nose I made from construction paper and we retold the story acting it out.

The straw house got blown/knocked down. Then onto the stick house.

Then onto the brick house...

Then we had to do the whole thing over. We changed the structure of the straw house to be more like a teepee.

Then we did it again with Mommy being the wolf.

After some lunch and stories, we worked on the favors for our friends (Hazel's godparents' daughter) first birthday party. Her mother asked me to make star shape crayons. I agreed and then found out she wants 100 of them. Needless to say we will be busy doing this for awhile. We spent a bit of time unwrapping and breaking the crayons. Luckily the ones our friend bought unwrap relatively easily!! I made a few trays of them. Unfortunately our star mold only does 6 at a time so we need to make it 17 times. The party theme is red, white and blue since her birthday is Memorial Day weekend, but they didn't want to buy that many boxes of crayons to do them in red, white and blue, so they are rainbow. For directions, I blogged about it here.

Then my little girl wanted to play fairy dance. She literally dressed as a fairy and danced around. I really should have pulled out the video camera for you to get the full effect, but it was fun to watch her show.

She kept asking me sit down to watch the show.

Then she wanted me to be a fairy with her. So she dressed me up as the butterfly fairy and we danced together.

Then she wanted to switch costumes. This of course gives you a better view of the butterfly fairy costume. The wings are a bit big for her.

Her pink wings were too small for me, so she decided I needed a feather boa instead.

Sorry all the pictures of me were taken with me holding the camera away from myself. So how do you spend a rainy day?

This is where I link up...

Check out the great giveaway at The Magic Onions. Armadillo Dreams is giving away a $50 gift card there.