Cochineal

This is my first time dyeing with Cochineal beetles.  They are a tiny bug that live on Cacti in Mexico and South America.  Inside their body is a red substance they use for defense.  When they die and are dried, we can crush them and use them for dyeing fabric, yarn and the are also used in cosmetics and sometimes as a food dye.  Does that count in the parts per million?
I bought mine on line from http://cochinealdye.com/.  Shipping took a while for the kit, but the 25g that came alone, went very quickly.

Step One:
Mordant the yarn.  I'm not going to go into detail of this now.  I will another time.  The yarn below from left to right is mordanted in groups of five.  Iron, tin, copper and alum.

Step Two:
Wet out the fiber.  The directions from the kit said to use distilled or rain water.  While it rained for almost 24 hours before I did this, is wasn't enough to dye the yarn, so I asked my DH to stop and get some distilled water.  He bought this.  I used 1 and 3/4 gallons total.

I then put the yarn in a stainless steel stockpot and poured the room temperature water on top of it.

At the last minute I found out I had enough dye to add two more of these hanks.  They were left from a batch that didn't work the end of last week.  One is mordanted with iron and the other has nothing.  They were both in a pot with some cherry chips.  We'll see what happens.

Step Three:
Crush the bugs.

Step Four:
Put the bugs in a stocking.  My DH gave me a hose clamp to keep the stocking on the funnel.  This way the stocking doesn't slip over the top.  Dump them in, tie the top of the stocking and place them in an empty dye pot.

Step Five:
While crushing the cochineals, have some of the distilled water boiling.  When boiling, pour it over the cochineals.

Let the yarn soak all night, as well as the cochineals.  We'll finish the rest up tomorrow.