You should absolutely be able to heat the veg matter again to get more color. I did it in a little 1 qt crock pot and eventually gave up counting the number of quarts I got from only 4 pits. It got to be so much stock that I was further evaporating it down in the big 6 qt crock pot. My understanding of avocado dyeing is that low and slow is the best for extracting the color. Also, colors become more vibrant (less brown) if you let the extracted liquid cool completely. You can get beautiful pinks/reds with just the pits, and peaches/salmons with skins and pits. Even in the dye bath, things need to go low and slow bc the dye stock will turn brown if overheated at any time. PS- I'm the one who was posting about trying to get the water to clear while making dye stock from pits. But life happened, and my beautiful deep pink extract was overheated and turned brown. I'm almost ready to try again. Thanks for being such an inspiration!
@@ChemKnitsTutorials I just watched a couple more videos on dyeing with avocado, and it seems it's a ph sensitive dye. Apparently, if you want to ensure pinks, add soda ash! (One lady used the ph strips, bc she knows she likes the colors at or above ph 9.) If you want the more yellowy corals, add vinegar. I've seen mention, too, of using soy milk as a mordant, especially with cotton. Something about the soy protein helping the cotton/ plant fiber take the dye more like animal fiber.
I tried dyeing with avocado skins/pita recently and found that the more pits I used, the pinker the hue ended up..I used lots of pits because I read they have tannins or something that actually act as their own mordant :) I got dusty pinks and they were super pretty!
I also wonder if you could do a smaller test between the superwash and non yarns in say just the mordant bath. I've also wondered about rust dyeing and penny dyeing. I have something growing on my property called poke weed. I'd like to try that sometime. Can't wait to see the beans. Thanks!
I started adding some extra minis to the baths because I was curious what I would see beyond the full skein of yarn. Just the minis is a good suggestion for the future.
I boiled, simmered, and let sit using about as much avocado pits and skins as you did for about 3 days and got a huge amount of dark burgundy red dye. I was dying paper (celullose not protein fibre) and got dozens of pages dyed pink to dusty rose. I was told that the pits provide the mordant so didn’t add anything.
A year before this video (approximately) I tried this with no mordant and a combination of pits, skins, or just on their own. ruclips.net/video/9tmhFzddSmA/видео.html I got some different hues and the cotton was really awesome (although still pastel). More time might have helped. I've also heard that different breeds of avocado can make a difference on the pigment.
Don't know if someone has already said this but I note you have said in one of your videos that your tap water is acidic. You can get a deeper range of colour from avocado with alkaline water. You can add bicarbonate of soda when you heat the pits and skins. You could also go traditional and use urine!
Have you ever tried to use oak leaves or galls as a mordant? Or soy milk? I save my skins and pits as well. I just let them sit out and dry the pits will dry fine and I think they give a more pink/peach color. The oak can give the yarn a brownish color to the yarn on it's own. You can use iron and copper to work as a mordant. The iron can make the yarn go very dark and the copper tends to bring out blues.
I haven't explored iron or copper yet. I know that different mordants can change hte colors a lot. i was surprised to see that the pigmentation levels didn't shift too much with the mordant.
I got dusty medium pink when I dyed with avocado, must be our very hard well water. One skin, one pit, one skein super wash merino, a small amount of citric acid at the end. Very low simmer, no boil, slow cook, cool overnight
I saved mine in the freezer. I also used a food processor to grind the pits after thawing. Did 2 separate dyes (one with Pits and one with skins). Total fail on wool but the cotton I used to tie the skiers turned out beautiful. Unfortunately I didn’t see this until after I had dumped out all the dye stuff. ☹️
If you use a slow cooker to extract the pigment from the avocado for a good couple days, you'll be much happier with the difference. I think the amount of material is good, just didn't cook long enough. It's weird how the color changes by doing that. It goes from brown to a beautiful mauve or deep pink. Obviously the yarn type and mordant issue is variable. Just my two cents. Also, dried avocado seeds have a ton of pigment.
I think it would be worth trying to freeze the pits and skins next time to see if there's a difference. A few people I follow who have successfully achieved a really beautiful pink, froze their skins
I think you are a little heavy with your heat, and freezing the avocado might give a different better result. Do you have a mexican restaurant nearby that could help?
I've got a lot of dried pits and skins collecting right now, but trying frozen is an interesting idea. I definitely want to do less with heat next time.
The mordant shifted the color green, I think Alan runs on the acid side. I aldo found that after the iron bath the eool felf even stiffer but not felted.
I tested the pH in another video, and I think my mordant bath is absolutely more acidic. I know acid can shift hte tone of many natural colors, so it would be worth seeing if I can shift the no-modant color with some vinegar. In the upcoming videos... some results with mordant and no mordant are extreme, others are a lot more subtle.
Pls try Hibiscus! I got brown with Avocado, and I boiled as well. My Yarn was damaged in the end. Ask for Avocado pits in Mexican and Japanese restaurants, they will be glad to give you!
I tend to be shy about asking for things in general. Lol. I'm very much an introvert but a bubbly one at that. ;) It looks like you can buy Hibiscus extract... Hmmmm......
Hi, just this week I watched you dye wool with liquid KoolAid bursts. Can you tell me the exact name of the video? My grandsons would appreciate it. Thank you
I don't know! I'm not planning on playing with copper or iron mordants in the near future. Mainly because I want to explore alum mordants more before I try to move on.
What if you went around to local restaurants and stuff and asked for their avocado skins and pits, or any other possible dye products lol? You'd probably get heaps of skins and stuff
So. I experimented with/on dyeing with avocado this weekend. Some simple things I learned (I dyed 10 skeins total). * you do not need mordant to get intensive and washfast colours *add iron, you get an ugly shade of brownish grey, Otherwise I did not experiment with mordant. Sparing this for the next time. *pH neutral water, chop the seed into small pieces, I chopped them as small as 1/16... it does not matter wether you chop the skin. * for intensive tones the yarn should be washed before dyeing with dishsoap or some other basic detergent to remove the fat. With fatty yarn the endresult can be uneven. (I love semisolids!) And the tone is significantly lighter... * to get the most intensive colour possible -you have to warm the avocado-water (max 90 C) about 2-4 times (3 hours each time) cooling the pot to room temperature in between of the sessions. After that remove ALL avocado pieces and run the coloring water through cotton fabric to remove the avocado-dust from the water. Easier to wash the yarn in the end. * Don't heat the avocado-water above 90 degrees Celcius, otherwise you will get brown (which is also nice, but not the wanted result.) The same with the yarnpot, never hotter than 90 C, I kept the heat in between of 80-85 C. SO SIMMERING POT IS TOO HOT... I did not experiment with lower temperatures. (Some dyers say that the heat should be max 50 C at any given time of the prosess.) So with lower temperatures you really get dusty pink and rosy tones! *the longer the yarn is in the warm pot, the deeper the tone of the colour. (I experimented between 30-180min of heating + I let some of the yarn cool in the coloring water over night.) *you get several 100g (2-4 depending on the shade of the colour) skeins dyed with 2 avocado skins and pits. But the pot IS depleted of tannin before the coloring water is exhausted of color. So too much coloring without adding more avocadopits in the pot, results in colours that are not light or washfast. (I am going to redye two skeins.) * If you want pinkier shades, the coloring water has to be basic. I added (food soda) bicarbonate 8g/1ltr of water. I am not sure which pH the water was, but the colour got really pink! *when washing the yarn, use neutral or basic detergent! *Have fun. Every avocado and avocado family is a bit different. You can never exactly copy the results! Hope this helps and I would love to to see a video of your next avocado-experiment. I am going to post photos of the yarn in instagram once the yarn is dry.
And I am getting words shade and tone all mixed up. Hope the idea is tsill understandable. I am not native in english. Yet. Perhaps in the next life. 😁
This is very helpful, thank you! I definitely heated mine up too much. At a later date I think I tried this with some moradant to see if that would help shift the color, but I think I boiled it so it was way too hot. I have a thermometer now so I can try to keep it a lot lower. Thank you so much again!
@@ChemKnitsTutorials I also noticed the pH is really important. pH brown, pH>7 ( i read somewhere pH 9 works well. But I had no pH-paper to check the pH of my solution. The amount of bicarbonate I added was still huge so probably the solution was well on the side of basic...) --> pink. I believe if you control alone the pH and the temperature, you will get completely different results. Love your videos, I have learnt a ton from you! And originally you inspired me to to give a go for dyeing and not being afraid of ugly yarn. (Nobody is harmed in the process and i still learn something.) So, thank you! ❤
Yes. I did this back with my original avocado dyeing video. ruclips.net/video/9tmhFzddSmA/видео.html I looked at pits alone, skins alone, and a combination. This time I didn't want to have too many variables. :D
You need less avocado pits and skins not more. One or two avocado skins and one pit is enough. The pits have tannins and act as a mordant. The earlier you take out tge skeins of wool tge more likely you are to get pink. Prolonged soaking turns them into a browny pink.
This yarn is all currently available in the ChemKnits Creations Etsy shop! chemknitscreations.etsy.com
You should absolutely be able to heat the veg matter again to get more color. I did it in a little 1 qt crock pot and eventually gave up counting the number of quarts I got from only 4 pits. It got to be so much stock that I was further evaporating it down in the big 6 qt crock pot.
My understanding of avocado dyeing is that low and slow is the best for extracting the color. Also, colors become more vibrant (less brown) if you let the extracted liquid cool completely. You can get beautiful pinks/reds with just the pits, and peaches/salmons with skins and pits.
Even in the dye bath, things need to go low and slow bc the dye stock will turn brown if overheated at any time.
PS- I'm the one who was posting about trying to get the water to clear while making dye stock from pits. But life happened, and my beautiful deep pink extract was overheated and turned brown. I'm almost ready to try again.
Thanks for being such an inspiration!
Thank you for this! I'm going to try to do this with cool techniques next time.
@@ChemKnitsTutorials I just watched a couple more videos on dyeing with avocado, and it seems it's a ph sensitive dye. Apparently, if you want to ensure pinks, add soda ash! (One lady used the ph strips, bc she knows she likes the colors at or above ph 9.) If you want the more yellowy corals, add vinegar.
I've seen mention, too, of using soy milk as a mordant, especially with cotton. Something about the soy protein helping the cotton/ plant fiber take the dye more like animal fiber.
So glad to see more natural dyeing videos, can't wait to see how the black bean turns out!
It is so fun! I love that range of colors so much.
love the light green colour!
It really surprised me.
Really like the light green color but also like the darker green.
Lovely outcomes
Thank you so much!
I tried dyeing with avocado skins/pita recently and found that the more pits I used, the pinker the hue ended up..I used lots of pits because I read they have tannins or something that actually act as their own mordant :) I got dusty pinks and they were super pretty!
Oh cool! I'm saving more pits this time.
Mandy Morrison Mandy did your yarn stay colourfast without a mordant?
Jill Lindfield I believe so! The pits make the mordant :)
Yes. More pits more pink
I am loving ❤️🥰 the varied colour of the wool! Just gorgeous!
thank you! I have a lot of plans to play more with avocado... including varying the pH! :D
I really like the colors. Can't wait to see the black bean yarn. I have no idea how to keep avocado skins and pits for a long period of time. 🥰🧶🦙🐑🐛🐫🧶🥰
I dry them out over weeks and store them at room temperature. It is a bit of a pain, but things started going bad when I was collecting inthe fridge.
Last Minute Laura did this exact die set and they both turned out beautifully!! So did yours.. 🤗
Thank you!
I also wonder if you could do a smaller test between the superwash and non yarns in say just the mordant bath. I've also wondered about rust dyeing and penny dyeing. I have something growing on my property called poke weed. I'd like to try that sometime. Can't wait to see the beans. Thanks!
I started adding some extra minis to the baths because I was curious what I would see beyond the full skein of yarn. Just the minis is a good suggestion for the future.
I boiled, simmered, and let sit using about as much avocado pits and skins as you did for about 3 days and got a huge amount of dark burgundy red dye. I was dying paper (celullose not protein fibre) and got dozens of pages dyed pink to dusty rose. I was told that the pits provide the mordant so didn’t add anything.
A year before this video (approximately) I tried this with no mordant and a combination of pits, skins, or just on their own. ruclips.net/video/9tmhFzddSmA/видео.html I got some different hues and the cotton was really awesome (although still pastel). More time might have helped. I've also heard that different breeds of avocado can make a difference on the pigment.
This was interesting to watch and see the outcome
Thank you!
@@ChemKnitsTutorials you're welcome :)
Don't know if someone has already said this but I note you have said in one of your videos that your tap water is acidic. You can get a deeper range of colour from avocado with alkaline water. You can add bicarbonate of soda when you heat the pits and skins. You could also go traditional and use urine!
Thank you! I haven't looked at the pH with avocados yet. I'll try this in the future.
Have you ever tried to use oak leaves or galls as a mordant? Or soy milk? I save my skins and pits as well. I just let them sit out and dry the pits will dry fine and I think they give a more pink/peach color. The oak can give the yarn a brownish color to the yarn on it's own. You can use iron and copper to work as a mordant. The iron can make the yarn go very dark and the copper tends to bring out blues.
I haven't explored iron or copper yet. I know that different mordants can change hte colors a lot. i was surprised to see that the pigmentation levels didn't shift too much with the mordant.
I got dusty medium pink when I dyed with avocado, must be our very hard well water. One skin, one pit, one skein super wash merino, a small amount of citric acid at the end. Very low simmer, no boil, slow cook, cool overnight
I think slower cook/less heat will help me out nexttime.
Donna have you found your colour stays fast when not using an alum mordant?
Jill Lindfield honestly, long term, not sure, hasn’t been washed enough times to tell.
I saved mine in the freezer. I also used a food processor to grind the pits after thawing. Did 2 separate dyes (one with Pits and one with skins). Total fail on wool but the cotton I used to tie the skiers turned out beautiful. Unfortunately I didn’t see this until after I had dumped out all the dye stuff. ☹️
I like the idea of blending up the pits.... Thanks!
Freeze! My mohair has a beautiful color of pink
THanks for the recommendation!!! I also need to heat less I thik.
I love the variety of colors achieved with avocado.
Thank you!
If you use a slow cooker to extract the pigment from the avocado for a good couple days, you'll be much happier with the difference. I think the amount of material is good, just didn't cook long enough. It's weird how the color changes by doing that. It goes from brown to a beautiful mauve or deep pink. Obviously the yarn type and mordant issue is variable. Just my two cents. Also, dried avocado seeds have a ton of pigment.
This is super helpful, thank you!!
I think it's hilarious your storage container matches mine: Costco nut containers. Aren't they perfect?
Totally perfect! :D
I was surprised. I was expecting much more pink also. I'd love to see what colors red cabbage or beets would turn out to be.
I have done those previously but with no mordant: ruclips.net/p/PLFvm3Bz7dhaXDnUbMSLsWtMwftb37pk6T
I think it would be worth trying to freeze the pits and skins next time to see if there's a difference. A few people I follow who have successfully achieved a really beautiful pink, froze their skins
If I can create some freezer space then this is what I'll start doing. (We're currently full of ice cubes for some projects and popsicles!)
I think you are a little heavy with your heat, and freezing the avocado might give a different better result. Do you have a mexican restaurant nearby that could help?
I don't think so I've used them Frozen and got the the pinks peach color. It's definitely elements shift the color green
I've got a lot of dried pits and skins collecting right now, but trying frozen is an interesting idea. I definitely want to do less with heat next time.
The mordant shifted the color green, I think Alan runs on the acid side. I aldo found that after the iron bath the eool felf even stiffer but not felted.
I tested the pH in another video, and I think my mordant bath is absolutely more acidic. I know acid can shift hte tone of many natural colors, so it would be worth seeing if I can shift the no-modant color with some vinegar.
In the upcoming videos... some results with mordant and no mordant are extreme, others are a lot more subtle.
I found the difference between the mordant and non mordant. Preferred the non mordant with my experience
When I done this I used a slow cooker which kept the heart to a steady simmer
In the extracts I've done so far, it is an absolute mix which I prefer. :D But it is easier to do no mordant for sure.
I put my avo skins and pits in a plastic potato bag and that way they won't go moldy because there are holes and or net patterns in the bags.
This is a great idea! I also want to try freezing them sometime.
Pls try Hibiscus! I got brown with Avocado, and I boiled as well. My Yarn was damaged in the end. Ask for Avocado pits in Mexican and Japanese restaurants, they will be glad to give you!
I tend to be shy about asking for things in general. Lol. I'm very much an introvert but a bubbly one at that. ;)
It looks like you can buy Hibiscus extract... Hmmmm......
ChemKnits Tutorials I got Hibiscus but I should be doing something wrong since the color is not sticking to fabric!
@@parisknit hi... Hibiscus washes off from any fibre completely. I tried with several mordant and they all washed off
I think you should get more of a pink color if you chop up the pits (not too much) but idk
This is absolutely something I want to try in the future!
Hi, just this week I watched you dye wool with liquid KoolAid bursts. Can you tell me the exact name of the video? My grandsons would appreciate it. Thank you
I think Dyepot Weekly 1? I'll have to double check.
Yup! DPW #1 ruclips.net/video/-VPuNcAFWMs/видео.html
I wonder what colors you'd get from other mordants, specifically copper or iron
I don't know! I'm not planning on playing with copper or iron mordants in the near future. Mainly because I want to explore alum mordants more before I try to move on.
AAAAAAACK....SHOW US THE BLACK BEAN YARN! ;-). But seriously, I think all four of these go very nicely together.
Soon soon! 8/27. There is a spoiler on my instagram from a few months ago. ;)
What if you went around to local restaurants and stuff and asked for their avocado skins and pits, or any other possible dye products lol? You'd probably get heaps of skins and stuff
I could probably do that, although I don't mind just collecting the skins.
So. I experimented with/on dyeing with avocado this weekend. Some simple things I learned (I dyed 10 skeins total).
* you do not need mordant to get intensive and washfast colours
*add iron, you get an ugly shade of brownish grey, Otherwise I did not experiment with mordant. Sparing this for the next time.
*pH neutral water, chop the seed into small pieces, I chopped them as small as 1/16... it does not matter wether you chop the skin.
* for intensive tones the yarn should be washed before dyeing with dishsoap or some other basic detergent to remove the fat. With fatty yarn the endresult can be uneven. (I love semisolids!) And the tone is significantly lighter...
* to get the most intensive colour possible -you have to warm the avocado-water (max 90 C) about 2-4 times (3 hours each time) cooling the pot to room temperature in between of the sessions. After that remove ALL avocado pieces and run the coloring water through cotton fabric to remove the avocado-dust from the water. Easier to wash the yarn in the end.
* Don't heat the avocado-water above 90 degrees Celcius, otherwise you will get brown (which is also nice, but not the wanted result.) The same with the yarnpot, never hotter than 90 C, I kept the heat in between of 80-85 C. SO SIMMERING POT IS TOO HOT... I did not experiment with lower temperatures. (Some dyers say that the heat should be max 50 C at any given time of the prosess.) So with lower temperatures you really get dusty pink and rosy tones!
*the longer the yarn is in the warm pot, the deeper the tone of the colour. (I experimented between 30-180min of heating + I let some of the yarn cool in the coloring water over night.)
*you get several 100g (2-4 depending on the shade of the colour) skeins dyed with 2 avocado skins and pits. But the pot IS depleted of tannin before the coloring water is exhausted of color. So too much coloring without adding more avocadopits in the pot, results in colours that are not light or washfast. (I am going to redye two skeins.)
* If you want pinkier shades, the coloring water has to be basic. I added (food soda) bicarbonate 8g/1ltr of water. I am not sure which pH the water was, but the colour got really pink!
*when washing the yarn, use neutral or basic detergent!
*Have fun. Every avocado and avocado family is a bit different. You can never exactly copy the results!
Hope this helps and I would love to to see a video of your next avocado-experiment. I am going to post photos of the yarn in instagram once the yarn is dry.
And I am getting words shade and tone all mixed up. Hope the idea is tsill understandable. I am not native in english. Yet. Perhaps in the next life. 😁
This is very helpful, thank you! I definitely heated mine up too much. At a later date I think I tried this with some moradant to see if that would help shift the color, but I think I boiled it so it was way too hot. I have a thermometer now so I can try to keep it a lot lower.
Thank you so much again!
Oh and I forgot this was the with and without mordant video. Lol.
@@ChemKnitsTutorials I also noticed the pH is really important. pH brown, pH>7 ( i read somewhere pH 9 works well. But I had no pH-paper to check the pH of my solution. The amount of bicarbonate I added was still huge so probably the solution was well on the side of basic...) --> pink. I believe if you control alone the pH and the temperature, you will get completely different results.
Love your videos, I have learnt a ton from you! And originally you inspired me to to give a go for dyeing and not being afraid of ugly yarn. (Nobody is harmed in the process and i still learn something.) So, thank you! ❤
@@peltopeikonpingotukset8049 My tap water is acidic so it is
Have you try beets?
Just once so far: ruclips.net/video/5CUMuJFY440/видео.html
Fun! :)
Thank you!
You know you get different colors with the peel alone versus the seed
Yes. I did this back with my original avocado dyeing video. ruclips.net/video/9tmhFzddSmA/видео.html I looked at pits alone, skins alone, and a combination. This time I didn't want to have too many variables. :D
You need less avocado pits and skins not more. One or two avocado skins and one pit is enough. The pits have tannins and act as a mordant. The earlier you take out tge skeins of wool tge more likely you are to get pink. Prolonged soaking turns them into a browny pink.
This is SUPER helpful, thank you!!
See if there is a Mexican restaurant near you will give you the pits and skins.