Natural Dyeing and Knitting a Fade
My youngest’s favourite colour is enduringly brown. A few years ago, I invited her to choose a knitting pattern and a colour. She chose a gorgeous leaf motif shawl with long matching gloves in the colour, you guessed it, brown. But not just any brown. Rowan wanted a particular shade and she wanted a fade. I thought on this for a bit. I couldn’t guarantee an even fade if I dyed separated skeins of yarn in varying depths of shade. There would be an obvious transition when I changed skeins, even if I alternated those skeins for a a few rows. The solution seemed to be sock blanks. Sock blanks are knit rectangles of fabric available as single or doubled yarns, the latter for making two identical skeins at once. You can unravel them into balls or knit right from the blanks. Singles would do for this project and I needed three of them for the shawl. So, I unraveled a bit of the yarn and used it to temporarily and loosely sew three blanks together. This extended length of fabric would hopefully become the fade we envisioned for the shawl and a separate skein would do for the gloves.
3 fingering sock blanks sewn end to end
I invited Rowan to also dye the yarn with me. I think subconsciously I was hoping she’d catch the fiber bug and maybe even choose to knit for herself but that did not happen. She did agree to dye with me though. We chose a natural dye, ground cutch, and I premordanted all the yarn with alum. This helps natural dyes adhere to the fiber and makes colours brighter and more permanent. Cutch is sourced from the heartwood of the Asian Acacia Catechu tree and makes a lovely milk chocolate brown, exactly what she wanted. We mixed the cutch powder with warm water in three different concentrations, 12%, 6%, and 4%. We poured the shades progressively in three bands along the fade and dyed the single skein separately. Some gentle heat, lots of time, and lots of rinsing later, we set the yarns to dry and eagerly watched to see if the fade we’d hoped for would emerge.
The fade was somewhat evident in the wet yarn but it really showed up when dry. Rowan loved it! I fairly quickly knit up the Greenhouse Knits #3 gloves by Alfa Knits which inspired Rowan to find some fabric and make a dress with me. But it took another almost two years for me to finish the shawl!
The shawl, #7 in the Greenhouse Knits series is a gorgeous, well-written and well-charted pattern. Using the Knitcompanion app on iPad was super helpful to keep track of where I was in the charts. I could enlarge the charts, highlight rows, and use the built-in counters. However, lace and I don’t get on well. My stitch count was off in almost every single leaf repeat and never in the same place twice. I suspect those pesky yarnovers; it’s so easy to miss one. It was a slog for me and I took so long that Rowan outgrew that lovely dress. She kept gently prodding me though until I made it to the peak width, the hump. The rest went quickly after that with the decreasing rows and the simpler leaf pattern. It was such a relief to finish this piece! I can’t say I enjoyed the knit but I’m happy with the result. It’s a touch stripey in places, which is likely a result of the natural resist that happens from the overlapping stitches in the blanks. Rowan absolutely loves the set! I like to think she appreciates it that little bit more having been involved in the process.
