Veggie Yarn

One of the best things that happens after retreat is that you come back inspired to create, and that you see more of the possibilities around you. For instance, the other night I was making one of my favorite dishes, kale with canallini beans. Kale is fast becoming one of my favorite vegetables, and it is delicious in beans.

In this recipe, you cook the kale first and use a bit of the cooking water in the beans. As I removed all the kale from the pot, I was left with this fabulous green water! Mind racing, I grab a test skein of BFL lamb (see previous retreat post) and throw it in the pot. It is a beautiful celery color but doesn't look like it's going to be colorfast.

So while dinner is simmering, I google dyeing with kale and find a reference that says it may need a mordant to be color and lightfast. So I dig through my dye supplies and get out some alum. Out with the yarn, in with the alum. Put the yarn back, and now it's purple.

I let that simmer for a while, and when I come back to get the yarn out before bed, the yarn and water look a dark silvery gray. I'm sort of disappointed not to have green or purple, but the gray is pretty. I dump the water down the sink, and as I'm rinsing the kale bits out of the yarn, all the gray goes away and the yarn is back to a beautiful celery green! Yea! Kind of a roundabout way to get back to the beginning. It looks a lot nicer in person than in this photo. The color seems almost impossible to photograph.

The moral to the story is to keep your eyes open to the beauty of the world that surrounds you, and don't forget to take time to play! You never know where it might lead.