Above is the undyed wool yarn.
Turmeric is a widely used ingredient in curry as well as mustard. Have you ever had a mustard stain on your clothes? Or has curry ever stained your plastic ladles yellow? That's turmeric for you. Turmeric has been widely used as a natural dye and is the traditional dye for buddhist monk robes. Some also use turmeric for medicinal purposes, turning it into a paste and smearing their bodies with it.
So yesterday I used turmeric as a dye by filling up a pot of water and adding approximately 3 - 4 tablespoons full of ground turmeric into it. For dyes, the root itself is meant to be used because the ground turmeric doesn't dissolve. But the ground stuff is all I had so I used it.
I boiled then simmered the water/turmeric for about half an hour. It became a bright red colour. I tested the dye by dipping a strand of wool in. It instantly dyed yellow, so I stuck a whole skein of wool in. The dye was uneven because I didn't saturate the wool in water first but I like the slightly uneven look that it got.
After I took it out of the pot, I soaked it in vinegar as a mordant for the dye but I've read that turmeric fades with time (we'll see about that).
