Finally, a use for eucalyptus (and other fun dye stuff)

For the last week or so, I've been creating dye stock out of various plant-based things that I've collected from around the neighborhood or from the grocery store. Things like walnut hulls (collected up in Napa Valley this past fall), onion skins (grocery), pomegranate skins (grocery), eucalyptus (collected on campus last week), avocado (grocery), and so on. It's rather amazing how much is out there for folks who like to use natural dyes! And when you add just a couple of mordant options, you've got one heck of a range of colors to start to work with.

For instance...


From left to right, what you have up there is: eucalyptus (no mordant), eucalyptus (alum), yellow onion skin (no mordant), yellow onion skin (alum), yellow onion skin (alum + iron), yellow onion skin (iron), walnut hull (no mordant), walnut hull (alum), walnut hull (iron), walnut hull (alum + iron). The eucalyptus with alum and iron was still in the pot when I took the photo - it's very grey, with hardly a hint of that lovely golden tan.

I have to add, I'm really happy the eucalyptus turned out so pretty. The tree itself is an invasive species around here, and the more uses one can find for it, the better! I'm not sure how light-fast the un-mordanted fiber will be over time, but I look forward to finding out.

Since I was using fairly fresh materials, I went equal weight dye-stuff to fiber, so 10g of superwash wool yarn with 10g of dye-stuff. For stuff that was mordanted with alum, I did 10% alum to weight of (dry) fiber. For the iron, I added 1/8 teaspoon to the 2 quart dye stock.

I've got a bunch more to finish up, and will be working on this through the week. Next weekend, I'll take a picture of the completed project - 40 yarn samples from 10 natural dyes - and post!

As always, I have to thank my loyal helpers in all my fiber efforts: