I kid you not— 9 times out of 10 when someone finds out that I naturally dye, they ask me: “Do you dye with beets??!”

My answer is usually “nah, nah….” as I haven’t heard/read about super stellar results. From what I’ve gathered through secondhand knowledge, the color tends to fade pretty quickly. And who wants that? I want color that lasts, so I’ve always ignored beets. But then some beautiful beets came is our Lil’ Farm CSA box this past week and I thought I should give them a try. This way I’ll know firsthand what dyeing with this veggie is like.

I saved all of the discarded tops from my beets before roasting them, then added some of the liquid left over from roasting. I put all of this is a big jar with a spoonful of alum, topped it off with hot water, gave it a good stir and submerged a skein of my handspun hemp/cotton yarn into the jar. It’s been super sunny and hot here in NC, so I put the jar outside to bake in the sun for a few days.

When I dumped the contents out of the jar, the yarn was the most delicious magenta color! I dunked the yarn into a bowl of fresh water and— not to my surprise, sadly— most of the color washed right out. Bummer!

The yarn was stained, so I guess it’s not nothin’… But definitely a disappointment. I’m still a little skeptical of the staining, so I’m going to do a lightfastness test over the next month to see how the color holds up to sunlight. (I’ll basically put a sample of the yarn in the window and let the sun shine on it. I’ll let you know how it looks in a few weeks…)

Welp, now I have a better understanding of dyeing with beets I guess! Hopefully whatever experiment I do next week will have more fun results!
Until then,
— KB