Natural wool dyeing 6. Yellow birch leaves

One day I went for a walk and collected yellow foliage from birch trees for my wool yarn dyeing.

I had 227 g of leaves.

According to some books I've read the best weight of dyeing materials equals the weight of yarn.

Next step. Poured enough water and put on the stove for heating. The moment it started seaming I switched the stove on the lowest heat and left for extracting color for about 4 hours.

     

                                                                                     After that I left it on number 2 heat. 

The color extracted a little. The next very day I repeated the process and by the lunch time I had a good thick red colour of the water. I deleted leaves from the water (just caught them with my wooden fork I use for dyeing).

I dyed one skein of white yarn and one which I had already dyed once with birch bark and had modified it partly with iron water. All photos of the result and comparison are below.

White 100% wool only dyed with yellow birch leaves

BEFORE (on the left)  Dyed with birch bark yarn ( partly iron modified). AFTER (on the right) Second dyeing with birch leaves.

For white yarn dyeing I used: Rustic wool from Russian producer Pehorka. It is also 100% virgin wool. 100 g = 250 m, 3,5 oz = 273 yards.