Dying Yarn with Tobacco

For Asher's birthday I told him that I'd knit him a new pair of socks. He was sort of weary until I mentioned "tabi" socks. Then he was very interested, and offered an idea to dye his yarn with tobacco leaves. Before we get started, please rest assure that we don't smoke or chew any tobacco.

So here we go!

First he had to clean the other gunk that was on my dying pan

(like tabacco is less gunky than food coloring.)

That's the make he chose. We used the entire bag.

We later learned that there's added sugar in chewing tabacco.

Bleh. Sweet leaves.

Tabacco leaves into the pan

Note: If you are going to do this, put the leaves in cheesecloth.

I'm still picking out dried leaves from yarn.

We let it steep for a bit ~1.5 hours. The water got really dark, and we did our best to get the leaves out. (Didn't work very well. see above.)

Added some vinegar to the mixture (probably around 1/2 cup)

The yarn is Valley Franklin undyed ~400 yds or 100g.

Here it is after cooking for ~2 hours. The water isn't quite exhausted, but the yarn is a nice caramel color.

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No pictures of yarn being washed because my hands were covered in bits of tabacco leaves.

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Dried and skeined. Little bit lighter than expected, but the dye is very even and pretty.

Tabi socks, here we go!