Berry Dyeing

I have this terrible berry tree in my yard.  It's horrible to prune, grows straight down, and stains everything the berries land on.

Stains everything the berries land on.


SCORE.  I figured I should first figure out if the berries were going to kill me.  I actually never achieved this figuring, but I think it might be an elderberry plant having gone crazy.  If not, I'm glad I didn't die.  I might owe that not-dying thing to Joe, as he made me spit out the berry I ate.  I do not owe the dyeing to Joe, though, because he was against it from the start.  But that's okay, because at least he kept me alive long enough to experiment with my yarn.

From what I read online (and you know how accurate everything is there), the purple ones are good, and the red ones are bad.  Both in terms of dyeing AND dying.

But man, those red ones are pretty!

I picked a couple quarts of berries, and had about a weight ratio of 2:1, of berries to yarn.

I simmered (not boiled-- about 160F) the berries for several hours, in a sieve in a pot (so I could strain them out more easily).  I added about 1 tsp cream of tartar and 1 tbsp alum as a mordant (dissolved in a cup of warm water, and added to the strained liquid).  I probably could have leeched more color from the berries, but the color of the water was already a very deep purple.  

I put in some 100% wool singles

And left it in the dyepot overnight.  

The color was very purple, but as it dried, it turned a deep gray with purple afterthoughts.

It's hard to even see the purple in the gray from my pictures, but it's definitely there.  From looking around online, it looks like elderberries (if that's even what these guys are) give anything from a light pink to a deep gray.  These dyeing experiments always lead to new experiment ideas, like how it would change if I heated to a lower temperature or picked berries later in the season.  But for now, I'm good with a gray with a hint of purple.

Although I DID end up with a far more purple dye elsewhere.