Yarn is a many-splendored thing. Particularly those yarns made from natural fibers such as wool, cotton, alpaca, angora, etc.

The animal and plant materials that go into such yarns are porous and absorb colour beautifully, such that many people have taken to chasing after sheep with gigantic vats of kool-aid mix, hoping to get that perfect electric grape purple colour they need for their next pair of homemade socks.

We here at Sinensis.ca prefer our wool colours to be a bit more subdued. Soft tans, beiges, sand and rust hues are more to our liking.

These tones can be achieved by using the dregs of any good black tea and allowing the tannins to soak into the wool. Duration and strength of the tea will determine how dark your dye is, and part of the fun is getting a slightly different result every time.

Step one:
Let the tea steep for about 5 minutes. You should have a really dark brown liquid. Squeeze out the tea bags if you wish. It doesn't hurt to leave them in, though, except that they might get soggy and break.

Step two:
Soak the yarn in the bucket of tea. Swish it around every so often if you want a smooth textured finish. Leave it without moving it much for a mottled finish. Test the saturation level by pulling out a good sized thread every five minutes to take a look.

Step three:
When the yarn has soaked "enough" pull it out and rinse it under cool water. You will lose a lot of the color doing this, so if it isn't dark enough to suit you, soak it some more. Be aware that when the yarn dries it will be slightly lighter as well. In our experience a medium light tan color can be achieved after about an hour. A richer tan can be achieved with an overnight soaking. When you are satisfied with the color hang the yarn to dry. You will need to do a second soak in cold-water color fixative to make the dye permanent.

Don't like the result?
Tea, being a natural colorant, can be washed out with bleach. If you have dyed some fabric and now decide you don't like it quite as much as you thought you might, rinse it by hand with a little bleach. Some more delicate fibers may not handle the bleaching well, so use common sense. Most cotton deteriorates with time and bleach is very harsh on cashmere and angora.