Amaranth Pink

November Amaranth dye jar success!

This year, 2025, I grew amaranth from seed, and they thrived in west facing pots.  Tassels get quite long, if left through to August.

Bright Pink achieved with Apple skins 'vinegar

After adding more flowers to soak in August-October dye jar, together with apple vinegar from apple waste and skins, the advised Ph3 was achieved.  The habotai silk finally TOOK the colour - a bright magenta pink.  It held and did not wash out, also rose-magenta pink after drying.  CONCLUSION: Either longer soaking OR apple vinegar addition allowed for dye absorption.  More pond water added to jar and more apple vinegar for subsequent pinks; maybe paler...

Pink or magenta must be 'coaxed' carefully from the flowers.  The joy is that the 'fixer' apple vinegar is available from ripe apple peelings in October. If the seeds proliferate, there'll be plenty of pink dye next year.

I must have got the modifiers mixed up: using Bicarbonate of Soda, silk turned gold in the purple dye. More tests...

A 3rd soak jar behind in image shows the flowers brown, as they were changing from flower to seed, only partly pink. However water has gone purple, so in hope, some more pink stems were added. [the older the plant, the pinker the stems].  This pink seems quite strong.  Amaranth plants are over by November, but keep producing tassels of magenta from July/August to November.

Amaranth Flower dye - first attempt - Testing August

First sample tests were cream yellows.  By September more tassels picked and they are still good, but starting to 'seed'. I made a dye jar in August, left soaking for some weeks with some vinegar and pond water, but only resulted in cream/beige. I added more to it in October and also added some vinegar, which helped get a pink result on Shetland wool.

Amaranth Coil bundle dyed

Using very long amaranth tassels, result looked promising as the pink went onto the silk, but it didn't fix well and the silk dried to a very pale patchy white-pink.   Maybe if silk was soaked in vinegar first, it would adhere better.  Silk would have been pre soaked in Aluminium Sulphate. [AFTERNOTE: if silk was soaked in apple cider vinegar it would have dyed pink]

Advice from blogs stated use vinegar. I added white wine vinegar to pond water, but yet to try only vinegar.

Two tones pink-mauve and straw in continuous yarn (see the two tones on removal from dye jar): is likely where the vinegar separated from the pond water...

LEFT sample Cream Gold colour is a Sumac flower dyed sample