Black Walnut leftovers

Last August I left state to visit R and while there she helped me crack into a bunch of black walnuts so I could bring some down to K. (How sweet is that? My inamorata gave me some of her foraged nuts and spent time busting into them so my husband could have some) Those bastards are HARD to get into, I’d heard that, but basically we bashed at them with hammers and chunks of cement so we could dig out small pieces of nut meat. Good on squirrels, because damn.

I knew the husks could be used to make a dark dark brown dye, but by the time I got there the husks were mostly gone leaving behind just a bit of dried black dusty clumps that clung to the shells. I gathered it up and stuffed it into a ziplock, figuring I’d play around and see if the dried up stuff held onto any of that color. I had so relatively little of this dried up stuff I figured I wouldn’t get that much dye “liquor”, but as I was just curious it didn’t really matter. Quick bit of interesting info on dying with black walnut husks, you don’t need a mordant or fixative, and it’ll dye many fibers that don’t take dye well. Cool huh?

Finally I’ve gotten around to playing with my dried up gunk. The little bit of stuff I brought home made some seriously DARK dye liquor, you can never really tell by the color of the liquid you’ve made however. I’ve had some impressively dark liquor dye wool an almost non color. Dang, I forgot I needed something to dye! I had a lovely skein of very fine wool yarn I’d spun on my support spindle, but not for nothing, I didn’t want to risk wasting it. For all I knew I was going to get a nasty grey, which has happened. I don’t have anything against grey in general, but I loved my yarn to much for that. Luckily I had about 20gr of wool spun onto my support spindle, out of a wool I hadn’t liked spinning enough to spin any more of. But single ply spun that thin out of not the best wool would be yarn I’d be able to use for almost nothing, so I just kind of guessed at half and spun it onto two different spindles to ply together.

This is what I ended up with! I rather like this rich reddish brown, I wouldn’t have been to terribly upset to have gotten this with the skein I love so much, but I am still glad I saved it for something else. I have a surprisingly dark liquor left behind, so now I have to figure out something else to dye.

Think, think, think.