Natural dyeing with pokeweed

You'd think that pokeweed berries should turn any fiber they touch into that brilliant magenta color that you see when you squish a pokeberry between your fingers. In reality, it's not that simple. 

Though many kinds of berries give a range of beautiful colors, their dye is notoriously fugitive, meaning that the initial color fades relatively quickly. I don't know why you would want to dye with something like blackberries, when you could bake them into a delicious pie instead.  Pokeweed, on the other hand, grows like crazy and it's not much good for eating or anything else. So even if it gives a fugitive dye, why not experiment with it and see what happens?  You can always over-dye your wool, if the results fail to impress.

First Experiment with Pokeweed

September 2017

I had spun two skeins from my raw cheviot fleece, and found myself in possession of a small amount of pokeberries.  This was the result.  I pre-mordanted the skeins with alum & cream of tartar. Then I mashed all the berries I could gather (which wasn't many) in a pot, added water & citric acid, and cold-soaked the skeins overnight.

After rinsing and washing, I got a nice watermelon pink color that varies from the rich, juicy red near the center of a watermelon to the pale blush color near the rind. In retrospect, I diluted the dye bath far too much. I was thinking of other dye experiences I'd had, where diluting doesn't make too much of a difference...the dye is the dye, and the wool will take as much as it can and stop there, regardless of how much or little water there is.  At least, I believe that's true sometimes. It appears not to be true in the case of pokeweed. It's probable that the dye would have been darker, had I not added so much water to give the yarn space to float about.

The finished skeins came out with natural and unintended variegation. I don't know if this is down to the dye (I suspect not) or the lanolin content (possible) or fact that the various bits of wool came from different parts of the sheep, and thus had varying textures and properties. I think the last factor most likely to have had the biggest impact, especially owing to two things. The first is my experience of carding and spinning the fiber; I know for a fact that there were wiry, slippery sections and softer, fluffier sections that felt and looked quite different, despite them all coming from the same sheep.  The second is the fact that there are sections of the yarn, as you can see in the picture below, where the two plied strands took the dye very differently even in the same exact area. That, at least, cannot be blamed on the dye concentration.

I used the two skeins of pokeweed yarn to knit a lace shawl. How the color played out was beyond lucky: the darkest section just happened to come toward the end of the knitting, giving me an unexptected but lovely border effect that I wish I could claim was intentional. It was not; it's entirely down to luck. 

I've heard about dyeing with pokeweed in a pumpkin shell for lasting and vibrant color, and it sounds fun to try.  I'll also have to find a better source for pokeweed so I can get a more concentrated dye bath.

ADDENDUM (June 2020): I never expected the pokeweed dye to be colorfast and stand the test of time, especially considering how pale it was to start with. As I write this addendum, about three years after the initial dyeing process, it has already faded a good deal to take on the peachier color that you're seeing in photograph below. That said, it must be acknowledged that a great deal depends on lighting, and it has always been a decidedly peachy pink. 

Pokeweed Re-visited

September 2019

Convinced that my first dye attempt with pokeweed was washed out because of the low concentration, I set about testing this hypothesis with the most concentrated dye bath I could possibly concoct.  I don't have ready access to a really huge stand of pokeweed, but I did manage to scavenge a good amount from a number of roadside bushes scattered around my area. I would guess that I had just over half a gallon of berries, all told. After crushing the juice out of the berries and straining the insidious seeds out, I added a mix of water and vinegar, using as little as possible to just cover my fiber.

The wool I dyed was from the same cheviot fleece as the first experiment, but this time I dyed the raw wool prior to combing or spinning it. It had been scoured several times and pre-mordanted with alum and cream of tartar. Despite that treatment, a certain amount of lanolin remained in the fiber. (The cheviot fleeces I bought from a local farmer were seriously filthy.) Perhaps the lanolin was the reason for the uneven distribution of dye in the wool, as you can see in the picture below.

Once again I used the cold method, using time rather than heat to set the dye. I left it for several days this time. Some parts of the fleece came out of the dye bath with a beautifully rich, dark grape purple color. Other parts turned out pale mauve, and barely looked dyed at all. All of the wool was put in the same pot, though there wasn't much room for it to swish around freely because I was trying to maintain the high concentration. The variation in dye take-up isn't gradual; you can see starkly different sections of fleece side-by-side.

The uneven dye job wasn't intentional, but it gives a fine heathered look to the yarn once it's combed, spun, and plied.

The final word (for now)

I still intend to attempt the pumpkin-shell method, if I ever have the good fortune to find myself with a batch of undyed wool and a good supply of ripe pokeberries at the same time. For now, here are my anecdotal conclusions:

• Concentration makes a huge difference. The only significant difference between my two experiments was the concentration of the dyebath, and the colors came out wildly different.

• Pokeweed dye seems to come out uniquely variegated. I used the same basic method with jewelweed and goldenrod to dye several different batches of wool from the same fleece, and the colors came out uniform and even every time. It's only with pokeweed that I got anything like this level of variegation. Perhaps it's something to do with the molecular structures involved? I don't know the reason, but that's what I'm seeing.