I’ll never be a dyer of fiber or yarn. I leave that to others. I have a mommy that dyes fiber with stuff she finds in her backyard and a close friend that dyes yarn with commercial acid  based formulas. Mostly I just play assistant and/or appreciative audience. Mostly I just say things like “Ooo! That’s pretty.”

But I have learned the basics. And I’ve always been interested in the history of textiles, dyeing included. Before the days of commercial synthetic dye formulas, we humans only had natural dyes. Natural dyes are trickier to work with and often rare. Some colors were rarer than others and those dyes used to costs fortunes, literally fortunes. One of the most important natural dye substances comes from the New World and it made plenty of people their fortunes.

Meet the cochineal beetle, a little parasitic bug that lives on prickly pear cactus and makes some of the best natural red dye in the world.

For the record, they don’t normally look like that. In that picture they have been uncovered so we can see them in all their buggy glory. Normally they look more like this:

So for this Spinning in Cowgirl Boots, I’m spinning up some red roving and talking about bugs. And history. And British Redcoats. And the cultivation of prickly pear cactus. And somehow Clint Eastwood and his Spaghetti Westerns got in there too.

Want to try dyeing with cochineal? Knitty has a short how-to article that should get you started and Cochineal Dye will sell you the supplies. They have small and large bags of dried bugs (lol) or whole kits complete with yarn.

Some more of me spinning and rambling:

• Spinning in Cowgirl Boots; The Tale of Arachne
• Spinning in Cowgirl Boots: Tale of the Three Spinners