Madder Red

I have knitted a Liberty or Death hat using a natural color wool (Fingering weight) at a 5 stitch per inch gauge.

I dyed it Madder Red today using a recipe from Claude Moore Colonial Farms. First I did a mordant of 1/2 oz tin and 2 ozs of Cream of Tartar. The wet yarn was placed in the mordant and kept at about 160-170 degrees for 1 hour. The yarn was then placed in the dye bath made from 4 ozs of Madder Red root powder. I heated this up to 170-185 degrees for 1 hour. I let the dye bath cool and then washed the hat with lye soap. I placed the yarn and hat into the washing machine, filled it up with cold water, swished it around with my hand, and then put it on spin.











Now I am impatiently waiting for the hat to dry so that I can use duplicate stitch to put in the LIBERTY OR DEATH. This dye job has given me the hat and about 8 ozs of wool yarn for some future project. Perhaps another hat for someone else?


I compared the current Madder Red hat with the Madder Red hat that I made for Mike last year. This Madder Red came out brighter (hard to see in this picture). I am hoping it is because of the time in the mordant. Next time instead of the Tin chips, I am going to try the Tin powder.

The last hat stretched a lot when I dyed it. This time I was very careful when I was moving the hat in the dye bath. This hat didn't stretch or felt at all.

My current project now is a sweater named Caroline using Berroco Zen yarn in color 8215. I have had this yarn for about 5 years. I started a project with it and no longer had the pattern. I had done only about four inches so it was no big deal to rip it out. I have never knit with a ribbon yarn before. It is definetly more difficult than wool - especially if you have to rip out any stitches. I downloaded the pattern free of charge from Borroco Free Patterns.

Mike washed his socks that he wore last weekend. These are one of the pairs that I had knit on the Passap machine. He washed them in the washer. They shrunk up a little and I put them on the sock stretchers that I had just bought to get them back to the size that should fit him.