Today's Dyepots

The goddess of the dyepots was kind, and gave me these:



The yarn is 20/2 Tencel, mordanted with 5% WOF aluminum acetate.

From left, the dyes are:

Monterey cypress chips, soaked for many months in alcohol. The yarn is about the same color as the chips (there's a photo here). I may decide to overdye to darken the color a little bit.

Walnuts harvested in May, when the hulls are still green and soft, and the nut mostly jelly. No shell has developed yet, so it's easy to chop the whole thing. I soaked the pieces in water until now, although in maybe September I strained off the brown liquor because the solids and particulates began to rot and smell really foul. Before dyeing, I scooped out a thick layer of green fuzzy mold, and boiled the liquid briefly to kill off anything else alive in there. I wanted a medium value, so didn't leave the yarn in the bath as long as I would have if I wanted dark brown.

Cocobolo chips, soaked for many months in alcohol. Cocobolo is a Central/South American member of the rosewood family, with distinctive stripes of red-brown and dark brown (you'll find a photo of the wood here) . The yarn stayed longer in the dyepot than the wool I posted about a couple of days ago, so it got darker but didn't take as much of the red hue as the wool. Protein and cellulose really grab different components of a plant dye.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with these colors. I wanted a light, a medium, and a dark value for a series of hangings I plan to weave on the 24-shaft loom. The draft will have an interleaved threading with three different design lines, each threaded in a different value. More information and pictures as the project progresses, and weft yarns hit the dyepot.