Rhubard root dye

After my first experiment with avocado dye and following the great workshop on dyeing with plants this summer I decided to try one of the recipes at home. I really liked the colours that we got from working with rhubarb root, especially when we did a test with an older dye bath (already a bit smelly and covered in mould) which gave a very surprising dark red instead of the orangy-yellow of the fresh bath. While I didn't manage to recreate quite the exact colour it was still a nice result.

I got a whole root - which is huge, by the way - and chopped it up in very small pieces. I then left them outside in the sun to dry for a few days until they were really hard and felt like wood. I wanted to preserve them for future dye-projects and my freezer was to small for these quantities of root-chips.  I think the result is the same but maybe the colours are a bit more vibrant with the fresh root.

I used my hand-spun yarn (the first attempt ever so excuse me if it looks more like a rope than actual knitting yarn) and I divided my skein to be able to work with different shades. I also used alum for mordanting as I did with the avocado because I forgot to buy the citric acid - less "natural" but it worked just as well. As you can see, the first dye-bath resulted in a  much darker, mustard yellow shade.

The second dye-bath produced a lighter shade of yellow but had patches of much more orangy colours as well. I wonder if it had turned into something even more reddish if I had left it longer?

Now it's just the question: what to knit with this unreasonably chunky yarn?

Finally, a note to myself: When dying yarn in cooking pots on the kitchen hob next time, wash them properly and stash them FAR away from actual cooking pots. I'm not sure how poisonous alum is but the boyfriend was definitely not happy when he noticed that he had been cooking (and eating) spaghetti from a pot that I had mordanted my yarn in.... and I was worried that I might have damaged his health permanently. My bad!