Logwood on wool - second attempt

After my last experience with logwood (aiming for lavender, getting black) I thought I'd try again with a much weaker bath. Last time was 50%. This time I went for 12% but then only ended up using 4%, as you will see below.

Fabric: 100g wool
Dyestuff: 4g (4%) logwood chips (this is an estimate: I started with 12% but threw away two thirds of the dye, as you will see below)
Mordant: 24g (24%) alum

So I started out with the intention of using a 12% bath. After weighing out my 12g of logwood and chucking over some water, the bath looked promising - much lighter than my previous effort. I could see to the bottom of the pan.



I dutifully boiled up the chips for half an hour and then drained them off. I was left with about three pints of liquid, which I topped up to six pints (to fill my plastic bowl) with water.



At this point I felt a bit less confident. The bath was looking very dark again - but could 12% really be too strong when they suggested 50% in all the books? I could've just gone for it but I really didn't want another ball of black yarn, so I snipped off a tiny bit of my wool (a very beautiful superchunky wool from Texere called La Crème) and dipped it in the logwood extract. I wiggled it around for a few seconds, then rinsed it quickly under the tap. Is this a good indication of the final colour? Probably not, but it might serve to give me a vague idea of its intensity.



Right, well, that's very dark indeed, and it's only been in there five seconds - clearly the bath is still way too strong. So my decision was this: I would measure out two pints of this dyebath (a third, hence 4%), dilute it with lots of water and use this as my dyebath. If, after a couple of minutes, the wool's colour was looking too subtle, I would chuck in another pint of logwood extract - and so on until I'm happy with the colour.

So I prepared my 4% bath and chucked in my wool:





The colour wasn't subtle at all so I ended up chucking away the remaining logwood extract. It seems that 4% - rather than the recommended 50% - is a good amount, and I was feeling very pleased with the process at this point. Even more pleasingly, the dyebath cleared during the dyeing.



This was even more cheering since, during my last attempt with logwood, I must have rinsed the yarn twenty times and there was still purple dye coming out of it, although it flatly refused to get any lighter as a result. The clearing of the dyebath is a very good sign that the dye has properly stuck to the yarn.



(It looks like a tiny ball of wool - it's not - it's just massively fat yarn!)

So this was very successful indeed and the resulting yarn is a beautiful colour, hooray! But I have questions - or, specifically, one question. How come all the books recommend a concentration between 12 and 50% when I found that 4% gave a medium purple? The only answer that makes any sense to me is that my logwood is ground finer than theirs; a larger surface area would definitely make a difference. I reckon that 2-8% is more like it, depending on whether you want a light lavender or a deep, rich purple.

Now I'm wondering what I can make with one ball of superchunky wool. A scarf would be good but the yarn is a little scratchy for that (I'm a wool wimp). I might attempt a hat, or perhaps a big woolly earwarmer. Suggestions gratefully received!