Buenos Aires in textures

Caro Etchart
May 4
6 min read

The next step: creating textures and colors, because the yarn we buy in stores come in a wide variety of textures, properties, and colors, and this project is precisely about creating the ones that will serve my practice.

At this stage of the research, I was in Buenos Aires. I took advantage of the trip and used my culture as inspiration, drawing on elements of our daily lives—and, by the way, we have plenty of raw materials.

I tried a little bit of everything: from organic waste to recycled synthetic fibers. In my recipes, I added yerba mate, cornstarch, eggshells, paprika, my sister’s pottery clay, rust from my mother’s railroad nails, and ashes from Saturday’s barbecue -asado, we call it 'asado'. All of my time in Argentina I turned into expressive material for my work.

Sure, not everything worked out exactly as I wanted, but I learned some things, and I’ll detail them right here:

SYNTHETIC FIBERS

I wanted to try incorporating both natural and synthetic or artificial elements into the mixture to see how the yarn would change in terms of behavior, properties, and so on.

I shredded some leftover yarn I had and added it to the mixture. The result was a super stiff yarn. (Just to clarify, at this point I was still using the first recipe, which had much less glycerin—meaning less flexibility.) The truth is, I didn’t go back to trying it with more glycerin because I decided to make 100% compostable yarns, but what I did love was that the colors obviously turned out super bright and true.

Pros: Vibrant color and a good recycling technique for fibrous materials
Cons: Very stiff and rough to the touch. Perhaps ideal for making items like baskets, etc.

COTTON FIBER

I was lucky enough to be welcomed in at the Prifamon factory, where they make cotton swabs and other personal hygiene products. After giving me a tour and explaining each step of the process, they let me bring home some pure cotton that, for one reason or another, they couldn’t use in production. In other words, discarded cotton.

Cotton, for those who don't know, is my favorite fiber. It's soft, cool, absorbent, durable, breathable, and I just want to wrap myself in it right now.

I had no doubt that I would use it in my research and in my recipes.

Adding fibers to the alginate mixture can make the thread stronger.

The longer the fiber, the stronger the thread.

I also wanted to see how the yarn would react in a humid environment when it contained cotton or another fiber. Will the properties of both materials enhance each other?

Sunflower oil / Sunflower oil + Cotton fiber / Coated pure cotton

I used that same mixture to coat the pure cotton yarn I brought back from Prifamon.

In this recipe, I also tried extruding with a larger extruder, about 7 mm. The result was a very thick and stiff yarn: difficult to crochet with. I made two samples: one with and one without cotton fiber.

With: It retained its white color. The fiber gave it its color.
Without: I learned that over time, pure alginate turns yellowish.

Why sunflower oil?

In theory, it’s supposed to make the

yarn less transparent—that is, to give it a matte finish.

Eventually, I stopped using it because

it didn’t make much of a difference.

As for the properties of these two materials combined, I found that, in the case of the coating, when the environment is very humid, the cotton absorbs the “sweat” from the alginate, maintaining a balance within this new coated yarn.

ASHES

This one stole my heart. Ashes + Cornstarch + Eggshells

Things I learned that can be clearly seen in this little sample:

When algae yarn dries, it loses up to 70% of its water content, causing it to shrink considerably.
The color becomes much more intense when it dries. Not because it changes—in this case—but because as the water is lost, everything becomes more concentrated.
Ash, like eggshells, contains elements that stiffen the structure. The more of these “fillers” the recipe has, the stiffer the result will be. And in this case, even though I used less than in my first attempt, there was still plenty of both.
Plus! Cornstarch absorbs a lot of water and “competes” with the sodium alginate, which also needs to hydrate to work. Between the two, they soak up a lot of water and dry out the filament: this makes it rigid and less elastic. After learning this about cornstarch, I stopped using it. Because while you can fix it by adding more water to the mixture, I wasn’t crazy about what it did to the transparency either.

Pros: Beautiful color, beautiful texture. Total beauty.
Cons: Highly rigid and rough to the touch. Zero elasticity, zero flexibility. It breaks just by looking at it. But ideal for making sculptures, if you ask me. The only thing to keep in mind is that you have to crochet with the hydrogel yarn while it’s “wet,” when it’s still flexible.

YERBA MATE

Yerba mate + Cornstarch

I had already made one out of pure, jungly yerba. Now I wanted to try a lighter, more mellow green. I liked the result, but the thread was less elastic—that is, it has less tensile strength: it breaks more easily when stretched. But we already know why.

COCOA SHELLS

Cocoa shells + Cornstarch

I liked this one too, and you can see how the color changes before and after drying. I don’t have much more to add, really. While I liked it, cocoa shells are not something I use in my daily life, so I decided to go in a different direction and save this recipe for the future—though I highly recommend cocoa shell tea if you haven’t tried it. It’s delicious.

PAPRIKA

Paprika + tonic water

Tonic water?!

This was a suggestion from Annie Ferlatte, one of the collaborators

on this project and an expert in biomaterials.

At our first meeting, when I told her I wanted to experiment with lighting and so on,

she suggested I try using tonic water.

Why?

Apparently, “quinine”—the substance that gives tonic water its bitter taste—is fluorescent.

In other words: it glows under ultraviolet light.

I thought that was pretty cool. Although I haven’t gotten around to testing it with UV light yet—

if anyone has a little UV light handy, we’ll give it a try.

RAILROAD NAIL RUST

Why did my mother have these nails stashed away in her garage? Go figure why mothers always have everything we need.

The rust experiment was something else.

In our country, unlike in North America where I’ve been living for the past five years, there are rusty things everywhere, and I wanted to play on that idea because it struck me as symbolic of what endures and yet transforms: rhythms, respect for the tangible, for what we have and who we are—not to mention that I wanted to see if it would give me a reddish hue, of course.

I left the nails in water for a few days to extract the color, and then I used some of that water in my recipe and let it sit

-We always let the mixture sit for at least 8 hours so that

it releases as much air as possible. Air creates tiny bubbles,

and those bubbles weaken the yarn. It's been proven by yours truly.

When I went to extrude it, the mixture had turned into a gel.

Apparently, the iron and minerals in the rust

accelerate the solidification process, and they also change

the pH, which, well, produces the same gelling effect.

And for extrusion, we need a viscous texture—not gel-like, but more on the liquid side, so to speak.

Far from discarding it, I added water, blended it again, and applied it as a coating on the pure cotton.

When I put it in the water with calcium chloride, the water turned black.

I panicked. It scared me. Never again.

First time mentioning calcium chloride.

That's what causes the yarn to solidify.

When we extrude our filament—using a squeeze bottle, for instance—

we extrude it into a water bath containing calcium chloride,

where we let it sit for a few minutes before setting it to dry.

This is a crucial part of the process.

Without this, the alginate is just a viscous paste and nothing but.

Once it dried, it turned out to be that reddish color I’d been so eager to see. However, it took a lot of work and a lot of water turning dark just to get a color I could have achieved with another pigment.

----

Anyway. Just a small selection of experiments I did in my beloved Buenos Aires.

There were more tests, lots more stuff happened. But that's all for today.

When I returned to Montreal, the project took me a step further.

The next step: creating textures and colors, because the yarn we buy in stores come in a wide variety of textures, properties, and colors, and this project is precisely about creating the ones that will serve my practice.

At this stage of the research, I was in Buenos Aires. I took advantage of the trip and used my culture as inspiration, drawing on elements of our daily lives—and, by the way, we have plenty of raw materials.

Sure, not everything worked out exactly as I wanted, but I learned some things, and I’ll detail them right here:

SYNTHETIC FIBERS

I wanted to try incorporating both natural and synthetic or artificial elements into the mixture to see how the yarn would change in terms of behavior, properties, and so on.

Pros: Vibrant color and a good recycling technique for fibrous materials

Cons: Very stiff and rough to the touch. Perhaps ideal for making items like baskets, etc.

COTTON FIBER

Cotton, for those who don't know, is my favorite fiber. It's soft, cool, absorbent, durable, breathable, and I just want to wrap myself in it right now.

I had no doubt that I would use it in my research and in my recipes.

Adding fibers to the alginate mixture can make the thread stronger.

The longer the fiber, the stronger the thread.

I also wanted to see how the yarn would react in a humid environment when it contained cotton or another fiber. Will the properties of both materials enhance each other?

Sunflower oil / Sunflower oil + Cotton fiber / Coated pure cotton

I used that same mixture to coat the pure cotton yarn I brought back from Prifamon.

In this recipe, I also tried extruding with a larger extruder, about 7 mm. The result was a very thick and stiff yarn: difficult to crochet with. I made two samples: one with and one without cotton fiber.

With: It retained its white color. The fiber gave it its color.

Without: I learned that over time, pure alginate turns yellowish.

Why sunflower oil?

In theory, it’s supposed to make the

yarn less transparent—that is, to give it a matte finish.

Eventually, I stopped using it because

it didn’t make much of a difference.

As for the properties of these two materials combined, I found that, in the case of the coating, when the environment is very humid, the cotton absorbs the “sweat” from the alginate, maintaining a balance within this new coated yarn.

ASHES

This one stole my heart. Ashes + Cornstarch + Eggshells

Things I learned that can be clearly seen in this little sample:

When algae yarn dries, it loses up to 70% of its water content, causing it to shrink considerably.

The color becomes much more intense when it dries. Not because it changes—in this case—but because as the water is lost, everything becomes more concentrated.

Ash, like eggshells, contains elements that stiffen the structure. The more of these “fillers” the recipe has, the stiffer the result will be. And in this case, even though I used less than in my first attempt, there was still plenty of both.

Pros: Beautiful color, beautiful texture. Total beauty.

Cons: Highly rigid and rough to the touch. Zero elasticity, zero flexibility. It breaks just by looking at it. But ideal for making sculptures, if you ask me. The only thing to keep in mind is that you have to crochet with the hydrogel yarn while it’s “wet,” when it’s still flexible.

YERBA MATE

Yerba mate + Cornstarch

I had already made one out of pure, jungly yerba. Now I wanted to try a lighter, more mellow green. I liked the result, but the thread was less elastic—that is, it has less tensile strength: it breaks more easily when stretched. But we already know why.

COCOA SHELLS

Cocoa shells + Cornstarch

PAPRIKA

Paprika + tonic water

Tonic water?!

This was a suggestion from Annie Ferlatte, one of the collaborators

on this project and an expert in biomaterials.

At our first meeting, when I told her I wanted to experiment with lighting and so on,

she suggested I try using tonic water.

Why?

Apparently, “quinine”—the substance that gives tonic water its bitter taste—is fluorescent.

In other words: it glows under ultraviolet light.

I thought that was pretty cool. Although I haven’t gotten around to testing it with UV light yet—

if anyone has a little UV light handy, we’ll give it a try.

RAILROAD NAIL RUST

Why did my mother have these nails stashed away in her garage? Go figure why mothers always have everything we need.

The rust experiment was something else.

I left the nails in water for a few days to extract the color, and then I used some of that water in my recipe and let it sit

-We always let the mixture sit for at least 8 hours so that

it releases as much air as possible. Air creates tiny bubbles,

and those bubbles weaken the yarn. It's been proven by yours truly.

When I went to extrude it, the mixture had turned into a gel.

Apparently, the iron and minerals in the rust

accelerate the solidification process, and they also change

the pH, which, well, produces the same gelling effect.

And for extrusion, we need a viscous texture—not gel-like, but more on the liquid side, so to speak.

Far from discarding it, I added water, blended it again, and applied it as a coating on the pure cotton.

When I put it in the water with calcium chloride, the water turned black.

I panicked. It scared me. Never again.

First time mentioning calcium chloride.

That's what causes the yarn to solidify.

When we extrude our filament—using a squeeze bottle, for instance—

we extrude it into a water bath containing calcium chloride,

where we let it sit for a few minutes before setting it to dry.

This is a crucial part of the process.

Without this, the alginate is just a viscous paste and nothing but.

Once it dried, it turned out to be that reddish color I’d been so eager to see. However, it took a lot of work and a lot of water turning dark just to get a color I could have achieved with another pigment.

----

Anyway. Just a small selection of experiments I did in my beloved Buenos Aires.

There were more tests, lots more stuff happened. But that's all for today.

When I returned to Montreal, the project took me a step further.

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