This is KnitPicks Bare Palette fingering-weight yarn. I’ll unwrap it and tie up each skein in three or four places so that it doesn’t unravel during the journey it’s about to take.

The first task is to scour, or wash, the yarn to remove any dirt or oils that might hinder the dyeing process. The yarn at this point is lovely and sticky, and it smells quite sheepy.

Here are the skeins, all fluffy clean. I soaked them overnight in buckets of soapy water (I use unscented dish soap) and rinsed them well - no wringing, just gentle squeezes :)

Here are two skeins after mordanting; the other two are busy right now. These guys look pretty much the same as they did before, but now they have a superpower — they will grab and hold onto dye.

I like dyeing with St John’s Wort; you get so many shades, depending on when you harvest it and on what plant parts you use. The plants are not blooming yet, so I should get a lot of yellows and greens.

The top skein came directly from the dye bath; I like to soak my yarns in the dye overnight. The bottom skein was the top’s twin until I mordanted it with iron for about five minutes.

I reused the dye and got these two colors; again, the top skein came directly from the dye bath and the bottom skein is an iron-mordanted version.

don’t they look nice?

More St John’s Wort dyeing, but this time with a laceweight yarn (KnitPicks Shadow). The top skein came out a reckless neon yellow and the bottom, iron mordanted, kept the original zing.

The second batch resulted in much tamer colors; again the bottom is an iron mordanted version of the top.

Here are all four. I’m not sure why, compared to the fingering weight yarn, the laceweight yarn shows such a striking difference in colors, but that is the magic and the beauty of natural dyeing.

Here are all eight of the skeins: the four on the top are the fingering weight yarns and the four on the bottom are the laceweight yarns.

Midsummer brings yellow flowers to the plants. If you pick only the flowers, which requires many mornings dodging and dismaying bees, you can get everything from green to red to brown. No flower picking for me this summer; I cut and stewed the entire plant top. The top skein looked like this when it came out of the pot and the bottom skein got the iron mordant treatment.

Now I’ve got six skeins, all dyed with st john’s wort. In a month or so I’ll dye two more, and that should be enough to play with.