Manitoba Fibre Festival Custom Yarn 2023

This year’s custom yarn is a first for the festival - naturally dyed and non-superwash Canadian wool yarn dyed with locally grown flowers! They’ve been dyed by ash alberg of sunflower knit with black knight scabiosa flowers grown and harvested by Jennifer deGroot at Big Oak Farm. Unlike synthetic dyes, natural dyes can’t be perfectly replicated from batch to batch, so ash took advantage of this fact to create a beautiful cool-toned rainbow through exhausting dye pots (aka using them repeatedly to create paler shades while using up all the available dye) and by playing with modifiers (iron and citric acid) to change the water. Black knight scabiosa is an anthocyanin-rich dye plant which means it changes colour easily with changes to pH and mineral content in water. The result? 9 gorgeous batches of Canadian wool yarn ready for your next shawl, sweater, or maybe even temperature blanket project.

About Black Knight Scabiosa

Black knight scabiosa (Scabiosa atropurpurea) has been cultivated in gardens for hundreds of years and is a popular cut flower for bouquets. Its unique shape and dark colour have gained it nicknames like “mourningbride” and “Blackamoor’s Beauty,” but natural dyers might be more familiar with the name “pincushion flower.” Bees and other pollinators adore it, and natural dyers can get teals, blues, purples, and pinks from it just by tweaking the pH and mineral content of their water.

While anthocyanins (the chemicals that give those gorgeous teals) aren’t as colourfast as colourants like indigotin and alizarin, they are very stable on protein fibres like wool when mordanted and cared for properly. Is their colour likely to last for 6000+ years like indigo? No. Will it last for many years if you take care of your projects properly? Absolutely.

About the Yarn

roots fingering has been ash’s most popular yarn for years. Made from Canadian wool sourced from prairie farms (primarily Rambouillet, although occasionally other range wools like Cotswold and Suffolk can make it into a batch), it’s spun at Custom Woolen Mills on Treaty 7 Territory in Alberta. Their turn-of-the-20th-century equipment makes a lofty woolen spun yarn that has great stitch definition and holds its shape fabulously for garments and accessories alike. 

ash’s main tip? Use this yarn for anything other than socks. It loves lace and cables equally, and its single ply blooms beautifully whether you knit it up at a loose gauge or use it as a tight weft on your loom. If knitting, you can easily use it for fingering weight and sport weight projects by swapping out your needle size. Just remember to swatch!

A Quick Science Lesson

The primary colours from black knight scabiosa colours come from anthocyanin chemicals, which are sensitive to both the pH and mineral content of water. They are also full of tannins, which help to bond the dyes to fibre, especially with the addition of iron to a dye pot.

When you add something acidic to anthocyanins, they shift to purples, and the addition of iron will “sadden” the neutral teals to a bluer shade. This happens both in AND out of the dye pot - if lemon juice spills onto the teal dye, it will shift it to purple, whereas iron-rich water could take the purple and shift it through to blue.

It’s a delightful and dynamic example of the life that natural dyes have to offer through their whole use, and encourages us to think and act more intentionally with our sustainable slow fashion wardrobes.

How to Care for your Black Knight Scabiosa-Dyed Yarn 

• Do not expose your naturally dyed items to regular direct sunlight. 

• Do hand wash them with pH-neutral soaps. 

• Do knit a swatch and test with your water and soap to see if you need to use a more neutral wash set-up (mineral-rich waters, especially southern Manitoba well water, can shift some dyes). 

• Do not “set” your dye with vinegar, as this may shift the colour. 

• If wearing your naturally dyed item directly next to skin where your body exudes more sweat, do not be surprised if the colours shift. 

  
  For more information, visit www.ashalberg.com/faq.