Madder Root as a Dye

Someone posted a message on my blog and Blogger sent me an email about it.

Well guess I should do some visiting and start some typing. 

 Life has been very busy. Intense.

 

 Above is a picture of the madder root. Which the plants grew for 4 years in the garden.

 

 This picture shows off the deep orange reddish color. I like it. I just threw a bunch of roots into the pot keeping in mind I would need space for about 4 oz of fiber. Poured water to cover the roots, set the pot outside in the sun and left it sit overnight. Next day in another pot I did 1 3/4 teaspoon alum for the mordant along with 1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter with my wool and simmered about 45 minutes. Moved wool to dye pot and put on low heat. Brought to real low simmer and cooked all day. Also before adding the fiber I added about 1/4 cup of calcium carbonate. Also know as ice melt. Yes, really. You can also add ammonia when the dye pot is cool but please look this up. It can harm wool. BUT it clears the orange and brings out the red. Just saying.

This market bag held the roots to keep them separate from the fiber and got dyed a good color. Happy accident. Below are some skeins which dyed up very differently. You can see some of the colors are very soft.

In the picture below this color was the first root soak which I though was nice enough to dye with. Most instructions say to pour that first soak off. Naa. I most definitely used it for a dye and ....

 ....knit up this pretty shawl with the yarn.

The bottom picture is a close up.

Which by the way this pattern was a tough little beast. It was a YouTube knit along with a lady from Russia. I loved her accent. My problem was the chart for the border and its repeat. I had to make up some stitches. I don't love charts but I wanted this shawl!
 The Gail Shawl part 1 

The Gail Shawl part 2

Note 1: I guess if anyone does give Gail a chance I would suggest to use markers to separate the repeats on both charts.
Note 2: I located the charts through the Wayback Machine
I think I put in her name, Dina Nugusheva.

I hope this was interesting enough and useful for the natural dyer enthusiast!
Happy fiber adventures!