Dye bath is for 2 skeins of Lion
Wool, 2 skeins of Lion Organic Cotton or 2 balls of Lion Cotton.
Ingredients:
2 large cans frozen grape juice
4 tbsp salt
4 cans water
Bring mixture to a boil in a stainless steel or enamel
pot.
Your dye bath is now ready.
To dye the yarn:
- Bundle the yarn for dying into a hank. It
needs to be looped in such a way that the dye will be able
to circulate freely but also needs to be secured so it does
not tangle. If you do not do this, you'll spend a lot
of time untangling it when it is wet. Bundling turned
out to be particularly important for wool yarn, which will
felt together if allowed to move during dying. Here is
how we made the bundles:
- Wind the yarn into large loop. You can do this
on a swift or by wrapping it around the back of a chair
or by wrapping it around your forearm from your fingers,
under your elbow and back up again.
- Secure the wound yarn by tying it loosely in two
places with short pieces of yarn.
- If your pan is small, double the loop, twisting it
into a smaller circle and securing it with two more
short pieces of yarn.

- Dampen the yarn by dipping it in water and wringing it out
well. This will help the dye spread smoothly through
the yarn.
- Place the yarn in the dye bath.
- Cook for one hour. If the dye bath evaporates to a
point where the yarn is not covered with dye, add more
water.
- If you want to test your color while processing, just
remove the yarn from the bath and rinse it. If you
like the color, great, if not, put it back for more
processing time. In our experiments in no case did we find
that processing the dye for more than hour made the color
darker.
- When the yarn is finished simmering, remove it from
the bath and rinse it in cool water until the water runs
clear. Do NOT throw out the dye bath until the yarn
has dried completely and you know you are happy with the
color. Note: When rinsing the yarn, use soap as well
as water. It is better to find out that your yarn is
not color-fast now than later when you've made it into
something.
- Wring out the yarn.
- Cut the second set of ties on the yarn, but leave the
first ones in so that the yarn is in a big loop.
- If you are dying wool yarn, put it back on the swift or
chair or whatever you used when winding it originally,
rewind it into a ball and then rewind it back into its
loop. This is because some of the strands may have
felted together slightly. The winding process will
unfelt anything that felted and we found it much easier to
unfelt the yarn when it was damp.
- In all cases, hang the yarn up to dry.
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| Lion Wool |
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| Lion Cotton |
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| Lion Organic Cotton |
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