I've been very busy getting ready for our big debut at the "Le Lot et La Laine" festival in July. This hasn't left me with a lot of time to take pictures of my work, but I did manage to snap a few photos of a batch of skeins that I dyed with avocado pits and skins.
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| The dye kitchen |
Here's my method. Wash skins and pits carefully. Chop them up into little pieces and throw them in a zip lock bag in the freezer until you have enough for a dyeing session. Find a nice large glass jar with a tight fitting lid and fill about one third of the jar with the frozen pits and skins. Fill the jar up with a mixture of one part ammonia to two parts water. Shake it up whenever you pass by the jar and let it ferment for at least a couple of days. I let mine ferment for a week. Be sure to filter the solution before you use it for dyeing. I like to use pieces of old cotton bed sheets for filtering. Coffee filters take too long.
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| Mohair skeins in the dye bath |
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| Mohair skeins dyed with avocado pits and skins. |
I wasn't very scientific about this particular dye session, but it went very well. I dyed four 100g skeins of mohair and two 100g skeins of silk merino lace weight with only about 200g of dye stuffs. The mohair took a long time to absorb the dye.
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| Mohair drying on the line. |
The silk merino laceweight took the dye beautifully, but did seem to pick up some dark patches. They might have come from a little bit of residue at the bottom of the pot. I have another bag of chopped up avocado pits in the freezer right now. Skins and pits give dusty rose colors. Pits only give red-oranges. I'm looking forward to trying the pits on their own.
