First Dyeing of the Season!

Spring is upon us. We have had some 60 degree days. I usually don't do much dyeing in the winter, simply because the wool is inconvenient to dry in the house; so when the warmer temps hit, I got anxious! I went to the freezer and pulled out my saved avocado pits and skins. I have a good supply of onion skins, thanks to Bonnie's Hometown Grocery where they save them for me. I had some skeined yarn spun up and some roving from the same fleece. I decided it would be fun to make a skein each of the onion and avocado. I put half the remaining roving in each of the pots. I thought I could blend this and spin it together to go with the other two skeins.

I started by putting pits and skins from the avocados in water in one pot and boiled that for about one hour. I filled another pot half full of onion skins and added water to cover by about four inches. I boiled them for about an hour also. I let the pots steep over night.

Later that day I mordanted the wool with a 10% alum solution. I cooked that for about 45 minutes just under a boil. I cooled the wool in the pot and washed it well after to remove any extra mordant.

The next morning I strained the dye into new pots. I put the wet, mordanted yarn in in the pots and slowly brought each to a simmer for 45 minutes. Then I let each pot steep over night.

The third day, I removed and rinsed the wool and hung it in the bathroom shower to dry...so much for warm weather. It is back into the 40's and feels too cool to dry the wool outside.

This is the result. Onion skins on the left, avocado on the right. Now that I see them together I have decided that I will probably not use just these two colors. I think some wool dyed with withies or dandelion would work in well and maybe aome marigold for green. Back to the freezer!

I will let you know what happens next....