One of the creative experiments that I wanted to do over Christmas was dyeing vegan yarn. I don’t personally believe that yarn is cruel, but there are lots of knitters who, for reasons of ethics or allergies, would like to have a vegan yarn option in the market.

It turns out that dying plant fibre is a whole other ball of yarn, so to speak. It’s chemically different, complex, and will require a lot of trial and error from me. It’s likely that I will have to create all new gradients just for these bases, rather than try to duplicate my signature line.

Above, you can see my first two samples; the left is 100% bamboo, and the right is 100% soybean (which makes me wonder… will it respond to protein dyes? Another experiment to try…). You can see that they both took the same dye totally differently; the soybean is much greener and warmer than the bamboo.

The bases are unique in other ways as well; they’ve both got incredible shine, but almost no spring, which would definitely make it a different knitting experience.

I think these types of bases would be nice to have in the summer, when you want light and lovely knits to keep the sun off your shoulders without making you overheat, but what do you guys think? Is this an experiment worth pursuing?

It’s certainly going to take commitment, the learning curve, the materials and the chemicals needed are pretty big, but the payoff is potentially cool too! I’m wondering whether there is interest before I go too far, so please weigh in :)