Prickly Pear Hand Dyed Yarn

Can you dye yarn with the juice from Prickly Pears? Will that hot pink color that comes from the Prickly Pear end up in the yarn? – Let’s find out!

A friend of mine loves to make jam out of Prickly Pears and was amazed by the hot pink color of the juice! She thought of me and my dyeing yarn and thought it could be a fun experiment!

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Materials:

• Prickly Pear Juice (extracted separately from my friend!)
• Bare Yarn (This is Super Bulky from KnitPicks)
• Cooking Pot
• White Vinegar
• Zip Tie or Shower Curtain Ring
• Spoon
• Tongs

Step 1:

Unwrap the yarn and attach a zip tie in the big loop to keep it organized and help it to not get tangled in the pot while you’re dyeing.

Step 2:

Fill up your cooking pot with warm to cool water and add your yarn to soak for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Step 3:

After your yarn has finished soaking, wring it out. Empty the water from the soaking and re-fill it with cool water.

Step 4:

Add the Prickly Pear juice to the water in the pot. Stir the mixture to fully combine the water and Prickly Pear juice.

Step 5:

Add about 2 Tablespoons of white vinegar and stir again.

Step 6:

Add the yarn to the pot and gently stir to make sure all of the yarn is getting to the dye and nothing is uneven.

Step 7:

Heat up on low over 30 minutes or so stirring the yarn gently half way in between.

Turn the heat off and allow to cool fully before washing.

Step 8:

Once the yarn is fully cooled, remove the yarn from the pot with your tongs and gently wash the yarn with some gentle dish soap and rinse well until all the excess color is washed out.

Step 9:

Hang the yarn out to dry!

Once it’s dried – you can wind it up and use it!

Overall, I love the color! I was expecting it to be a little bit more vibrant, but it did not take as much of the color as I thought it would. This color reminds me of a rose gold – which is super beautiful – but still different than I thought it would be! It feels like a similar color to when I dyed the yarn with Passion Tea here! What do you think?

What do you think of this experiment? Do you like the color? Do you want to see more experiments like this for dyeing yarn? Please comment down below and let me know!