Skeins...

foreground to background:

pink - beetroot

grey brown - black tea & wildberry tea

pink beige - beetroot (less alum used)

beige - black tea

yellow - tumeric (1 day in the dye and sun bleached afterwards)

pale yellow - bougainvillea

another closeup of the skeins

skeins of wool post-dye

Some of my first attempts at dyeing whole skeins of wool. These were all 50g balls which I unwound into skeins and tied with cotton threads. The cotton really helped prevent the wool from tangling up during the dye process. The amount of mordant & dyestuff needs to be refined though, as I'm not getting the depth of colour I get with the smaller amounts of wool.

The tea dyes had two rounds of tea each of one week to deepen the colour. I mordanted them again each time. The colours are still quite light though.

I've already started to over-dye again the pale beetroot skeins and the tea ones (for a third time!). I was hoping for a much darker pink on the second beetroot but for some reason the dye just didn't stick. I'm overdying the wildberry tea with more wildberry tea in the hope of a more grey colour. The plain black tea skein is being overdyed with some old red wine and will hopefully yield a darker brown colour.

This process sure encourages patience! Those few skeins are the result of about a month's work.