Hello, everyone. And welcome. I am Kim Biegler, the owner of Ewethful Fiber Farm and Mill, and I am sitting here at home in Harrisburg, Oregon, getting ready to talk to you about dyeing in the wool and trying to make it as easy as possible. So as it is to do so that you will be inspired to maybe try it out. If you've been a little nervous about taking the dye plunge. Before I go on, I just wanted to let you know of places you can find me. You can go to Ewethfulfiberfarm.
com and there's a pop up there so you can join the newsletter, which is a great place to get updates and Product updates as well, you can also find me on Instagram at Ewethful fiber mill and you can also Join my patreon community, which is a very fun place.
We have workshops going social meetups and What's really exciting is that you get early bird notice on the fibers coming out of the mill So if you've ever been to my website and you've wondered where all the fiber is It doesn't make it there that often. So head to my patreon community to www. youtube. com be alerted of new fibers as they come out. And the space over in the Ewethful community on Patreon is a very inclusive space. It is a space of positivity, is it is.
It is a community of makers and we are all there to appreciate each other and be kind to each other. So if that's what you're looking for and you want to talk about fiber and wool all the time, come find me. Okay, so let's talk about dyeing in the wool.
And I'm going to tell you, first off, that back in the day when I started this mill, I said to Mitch, I'm never going to dye, D Y E that is, and I learned my lesson, never say never, never say never, because here I am doing a podcast all about dyeing in the wool. So here's what we're going to cover. Why I think dyeing in the wool is the perfect place to start, and I will say specifically what I mean by dyeing in the wool. The problems that dyeing in the wool can fix on some of your wools.
And then I'm going to walk you through a few steps So you can just kind of hear how easy it is. It really is easy. And I'm talking specifically about acid dyes here, which you can find at dharmatrading. com. That's kind of where there's Jacquard and Dharma are the two big acid dyes. You can buy them there. You can buy citric acid there.
You can buy a lot of your dyeing, any dyeing tools that you think you may want there, but citric acid and the dyes are the big things that you could buy there to make this really simple for you. Okay, so what do I mean by dyed in the wool? Because you may hear that kind of thrown around a little bit in the community. So what I'm specifically talking about is dyeing in lock formation.
So this is the wool has been cleaned, the lanolin has been removed, but no picking, carding, combing, none of that has happened yet. So it's, It's washed and then it's ready to go into the dye pot. So that's specifically what I'm talking about. And what I mean by lock formation, meaning it hasn't been carded or combed or anything has been done to it other than it being cleaned. So this would mean that you have a fleece, right?
Okay. So why do I think that this is the perfect place to start learning about acid dyeing? I have a couple of reasons. The first one is that plain and simple, when you dye in lock formation, you don't need to worry about color. Saturation being even so you could dye a pot of some wool and usually maybe four to eight ounces is what you're dying at a time You could dye a pot and it could be different shades of the same color, and it doesn't matter.
Now if you're dyeing yarn, you may be trying, if you're trying to dye a solid yarn, that's gonna be very different, right? You're gonna have to take some other practices in. But when you're dyeing in the wool, if you pull out your wool out of the dye pot, and you've got three different shades of red that, because they took up the dye at different levels at different paces basically.
What's wonderful is that you're going to card it, you're going to pick it, you're going to do all these things and they're just going to blend together and you're going to get an even more lovely yarn, I think. It's going to have more character and it's going to saturate once you start to spin it. You know, color saturates and gets deeper once you turn it into yarn. So you don't have to worry.
You can blend four different shades of the same color and you're going to get this lovely, lovely, beautiful yarn. So there's not the stress of trying to make sure that all the wool in your dye pot is the same color. So that's one big reason. You get to play with color, right? This is a wonderful place. If you haven't been able to mix colors in your life before, this is a great place to start. Because you can, you know, add a little bit of yellow. And then you can add a little bit of green.
And you can add, add, add. And because, going back to my first point here, it doesn't matter if all of the wool in that pot takes up those colors evenly. You don't have to stress and you can just say, I wonder what happens if I started with this yellow and then I add this bit of blue into here. I add this bit of teal into here or I add this bit of pink into here. You get to find out without the stress of worrying about is all going to dye up evenly.
Sometimes you're not going to get a color you may love, but that's okay. That's just part of the fun in the experimenting. And the third reason is that you get to learn the process of dyeing, because there are steps that go into it. It's not scary, and I'm going to walk you through them.
But the more you do it, The more comfortable you become with the process and then you can become more comfortable with playing With the process and then maybe you become more comfortable and you say hey I want to dye some solid yarn As you get more comfortable just with working with the tools that get you that dyed color So those are some reasons that I think working with Lock formation wool makes it so much easier to learn. It's so much less stressful.
Okay, I mentioned some problems you can fix, and this is pretty exciting. I'm not gonna say this is 100 percent on this first point, but I have two things that you can fix well, I think, and have found with my history of dyeing, when you dye with acid dyes. The first one is, if you bought a white fleece, let's say, and it's got some yellowing stains to it. So you bought this fleece, you washed it, it's got some yellowed stains to it. It can be sweat, it can be just all the different things.
All the different things that sheep are excreting, right? It can be stained, they call that canary stains. Hey, you know what you can do? You can over dye it. I mean, basically, you're just dyeing it. And by the way, over dyeing is just dyeing over a color. Whether that color be natural. or something that's already been dyed. So don't be too freaked out by the term overdye.
Technically, if you have a white fleece that just has canary stains, I mean, you are over dying the yellow, but you're just dying a white fleece. But over dying can be you're over dying a natural gray fleece too. So that's what that means. Okay. So You have canary stains, throw some dye on top of it. Nobody will ever know that that fleece was canary stained. And if you know me at all, which if you've been listening or following on YouTube, Oh my gosh, I forgot to say, you can find me on YouTube.
Holy cow. Yes, you can find me there. I try to salvage wool as best I can. I really do. So that's one great way to do it. Okay. Here's the other big, wonderful thing that most people don't know because I just experimented with this and it worked out. If you get a fleece that has. Scurf.
And scurf is, so we can define it, scurf is, so you bought a fleece, you wash the fleece, all of a sudden there's these little particulates that seem to be down towards the cut end of the fiber and they are stuck to the fleece. They aren't going to come out with washing and they are very difficult to get out. They're not going to come out through picking. They're not going to come out through carding. Most of this particulate is going to be there.
What it is is it's just a dander that comes off the sheep oftentimes when they have lice or mites. So they have this little parasite. You all don't freak out. Don't freak out. These are animals that live outside. They are going to pick stuff up occasionally. It's not the end of the world. And generally speaking, a shepherd will figure it out, and then they'll treat them, and you move on.
But, let's just say you bought this fleece, shepherd didn't know that the, that there was dander in it, you wash it, oh my gosh, there's this stuff in it. And it's kind of sticky, right? And it's not just gonna come off. I have had wonderful success with acid dyeing those fleeces and the scurf. And I don't know the, I don't know the science behind it. I don't know if it's the additional heat because you generally tend to heat beyond what you would when you're scouring.
So I don't know if it's the additional heat that helps take that scurf away or if it's just the chemical reaction of the acid dye and maybe the citric acid. But one way or another, I have dyed up many a scurfy fleeces and no scurf when I take it out of the dye pot. So. There is something you can try. Okay, so let's just briefly start with what wools to work with when you're starting.
And I think that, sorry you all, I'm trying to find a post that I just did that covers all this because I just did a workshop in my Patreon community all about dyeing in the wool. If you join patreon the recording is there so you can still go watch it You have to be at the 10 or 20 level a month, but you get a ton of great stuff at those levels So if you're interested head to my patreon community, okay, so what wools to start with?
Okay, first off you can start with waste wool If you're nervous just start with some waste wool, right? And if you've been like collecting up wool that you were gonna re card or do something with Practice with that. It, that's what I consider waste wool. You can always reach out to me and say, Hey, I need some waste wool. And trust me, I have got plenty that you could use. Okay. Breeds though. I would say a Romney, a Dorset.
Dorsets are really well known for what we're looking for here, by the way, is wools that won't felt up easily on you. And that are easy to work with and are pretty loose and open. Dorsets are known for. not felting easily. Like they're really great for knitting or crocheting up socks because they, or I suppose you could weave some socks because the wool does not felt easily. Columbia wool, Jacob wool, all those wools.
And there are many more, but those are just a few that came to are going to be great because remember this you all. You can put wool in hot water. What you can't do is put wool in hot water and agitate the heck out of it. That's how you're going to felt it. And occasionally it does happen. Don't ask me if it's ever happened to me. But you may walk away from the die pot and the pot starts to boil when you walk away or it starts to simmer too much and those little bubbles can create felting.
So first off, try not to walk away from the diapod too much. Note to self. So anything that, and also you are going to stir it a little bit. So when you're first starting, just wools that are not going, that are not prone to felting are going to be easier. Jacob would be really fun because often they are multicolor fleeces. So if you had part of the Jacob fleece that was gray and part that was white, it's going to take up the color differently, right? it's gonna look different in the end.
So, those are some great rules to start with. Okay, so we're just gonna, I'm gonna just quickly walk you through the steps so that you could see how this isn't that complicated. And really you need a heat source, you need a pot that you're not going to cook from ever again after you start dyeing in it. You need like a spoon, a mask, some gloves, the dye, citric acid, wool. Clean wool. There's not a lot to it. Okay, so here's what you do. You start with your clean wool, right?
You're getting the lanolin out. You want wool that is clean without lanolin because the lanolin will block the wool from being able to take up that dye. So, lanolin free wool. You're going to soak that wool in just some tap water. You could add a drop of Dawn dish soap if you want to. You don't have to, but you want to soak the wool in just some tap water in a bowl or in another pot for at least 30 minutes before dyeing.
This just kind of preps the wool so that it's ready to go into the dye pot and take up the dye a little bit faster. Nothing fancy there. You're gonna start your dye pot and I start heating up my pot to before I put the wool in. And the main reason I do this is because the next step, the next step is adding your citric acid, which it's not anything scary. This is food grade citric acid. You're adding like a tablespoon of it in there, stir it up.
And if the water's a little warm, things are just going to stir up better, right? It's like any other type of, if you put sugar in something, it just dissolves better in a warm water. So I like to have my water a little bit warm. I add the citric acid. I add the dye and all, you know, measurements and things.
I did actually in Patreon, I put up a post with the workshop recording that has some of my like standards for like, in this color, this is how much dye I use, in this color, this is how much dye I use. So if you're looking for notes like that, you can find it there. So all the directions can are with the dye. So you'll figure it out.
Okay, so you've got your pot, it's warming up, your other pot is just with your wool that's just soaking in it, you've added your citrus dye, you've added your acid, your your citric acid, you've added your dye. So now it's time to put that wool that was soaking, into your pot that has your dye in it. And you just pull the wool out in small chunks, kind of open it up a little bit just so that the dye can get through and plop it in the water.
Don't plop it too hard or you're going to splash dye all over you and then you're going to mess your clothes up. But put it in the water. So you get all that wool in there. And I usually will put about half in. I'll take a spoon. I'll kind of give it a light flip so that the stuff, the wool that's on the top goes to the bottom because the dye, the wool that's on the bottom is going to take up. faster and more saturated.
So I kind of give it one little pfft, then I put the rest of the wool on top and I do that again. I just give it one more little toss. You can toss once or twice during the dye process if you want to, totally up to you. That's just going to make the dye take more evenly. But if you don't care because you're going to blend it all up and it's going to be this beautiful wool anyway, then don't worry about it. The less you agitate the wool, the less likely you are to get felting.
So now we're going to just bring, we've got all the wool in there. We're going to bring the water up to just under simmering. So I think it was like a hundred or around 200 or so. You don't want it boiling. You really, you know, I usually will see a couple of bubbles come up and that's how I know it's time to turn it off. I used to use a thermometer. I've gotten a lot less perfect about this stuff, because you get more comfortable, you understand the process, you may not need as many tools.
So, as soon as you start to see a bubble or two coming up, you're probably heated to that point. You can also, I use a white spoon, like a big white cooking spoon, and I just put it in there. And you can see how much dye is left in the water. The goal is that you don't have a lot of dye left in the water, because you want all the wool to take it up. It comes with a little bit of practice of knowing how much dye to add, but you can always add more dye, you all.
You can't take dye out, but you can always add more dye during the process. So don't be afraid. You all, that's it. You brought your pot up to, to just below simmering. Turn off your heat source. Unplug what you need to unplug to make this space safe. Put a lid on it. I usually don't keep it like, if I'm cooking on just like a burner, I will take it off the heat source just because I want it to cool a little bit faster.
If it's really cool outside, you can always put it like on the concrete outside, it's gonna cool faster. Leave the lid on it, though, because you don't want outside debris to get in there. Or just put it on some trivets, whatever you want to do, but I take it off the heat source so it will cool faster. And then you just leave it. I generally leave it overnight. The cooling process is just as important as the heating up process, basically.
You don't want to just rip your wool out, maybe not just as much, but it's important. I mentioned this in the workshop, reds especially. Ah! When I'm finished dyeing a red, I'll put the spoon in and I'll look at it and I'll say, Oh, there's still some red dye in that water. Well, we've already reached the heat that I want it to get to. So I may have just added too much dye. Put the lid on, come back the next day. You know what?
There's barely any red left in that water because the wool continued to take up the dye. So you don't want to cut that short. You want to leave the wool in. You want to let it naturally cool. And then usually the next day you're ready. And all you do from here is things that, as makers, you've probably done. You're just going to rinse it and soak it. Actually, you don't soak it. You just rinse it. So what I do is I use some Eucalan or whatever wool wash you use.
Just a regular wool wash like you would use to finish your finished garment or your finished skein. I make a little, a little bath of that with some like lukewarm water, put a little soap in there, put my wool in there. If there's extra dye, you might want to do some extra rinses, but as you get better, you'll have less extra dye in your wool. So you just want to give it that little rinse in with a little soap.
And I just think it takes, helps take some of that smell out that may be left over from the acid dye. And then I do one rinse. So I do a quick soap with some with some quick. rinse with some soap and water. And then I do one more rinse that's just water. And if there's not a lot of dye coming out, that's it. You can give it a good little squeegee in your hands. I wouldn't turn it, you know, you don't want to do any sort of felting action to it, but just try to get the water out.
You could use a salad spinner to get extra water out. If you have, be careful, if you have a top loading washing machine that you can just put. A spin on? That's a great way. You're going to dry probably three days faster. If you can get all that water out. For me, I take it to the mill, and I put it in my scouring machine, and I just put it on the spin cycle. And by the next day, I'm dry. It'll take a few days if you don't have something like that.
You could wrap it in a towel, kind of like you would your finished item, right? To get some of that excess water out. Lay flat to dry. You're done. Isn't that simple? So this really is not super complicated. You don't need a lot of supplies. You don't need it to be fancy. You just need to get your dyes, your citric acid, and your basic supplies to be able to put the wool into things and move them around. But it really is a simple process.
It maybe takes It just depends on your heat source, how long it will take to heat up, and you don't want to like, whoop, you know, a slow heat up is great, so I wouldn't put it 0 to 60 on my burner, you know, unless you have really weak burners, which I do, but if I were at home, I would put it all the way to high on my stove top. I would probably do a slow heat up. So, there you all go. One last moment, one last thing, is that your, your fiber will Be lighter once it dries out.
So it usually lightens a couple shades by the time it's dry So just keep that in mind if you want a really saturated color and it looks really saturated in the pot You may still need to add a little bit more To get because it's going to lighten up a bit once it's dry. That was my final note So I hope that helps inspire some of you to be less nervous about dyeing with acid dyes Hand spinners, especially.
I think there's nothing better than dyeing than spinning a dyed in the wool fiber because you get such beautiful saturation that you cannot get By dyeing once it's yarn because the dye just can't get through those fibers in the same way So I would love to hear from you. Feel free to fill out the google form that is in the show notes You can email me. You can message me on all the platforms. Don't forget. I have a youtube and because I do I And I would love to hear from you.
And I would especially love to see you in the Ewethful Patreon community. So come join us. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. I look forward to talking to you soon.