Natural Dyeing - Black Walnut Edition

In the back of my head I have had for a very long time this idea of trying my luck at dyeing with some of the most common natural dyeing materials around. In fact I had hoped to take a dyeing class at the local Minneapolis Textile Center this year and that, of course, did not happen. Short of the class I decided to dive into it by reading a few books and blog posts and then just do it. The wine stain, the final product of the story worth telling, was my first attempt using scoured, spun, plied and mordanted white wool to get color. As first attempts go it turned out pretty well. Throughout the spring and summer I have been saving two composting products from the kitchen: onion skins and avocado skins and their seeds. According to the book I have one needs the same weight in these natural dye starters as the weight of the yarn to be dyed. As you can imagine that means a whole lot of onion skins. We are getting there. Avocados are much easier to get that weight but truth be told we don´t eat that many. Since I am mixing red and yellow onion skins I should get a pale tan/orange color and the avocados will produce a light pink/purple. One of the intriguing things about dyeing naturally is there are so many variables that impact color. The dyer will not know the exact color until the processing is complete! While my dyeing compost acculumates and dries I looked into gathering black walnuts from the several trees Mom has on the farm. I anticipated a rich brown color from them. This summer I started looking up into the trees to see if I could see the clusters of nuts forming, but there was nothing to see. By late August it seemed to me I was not seeing them because there were none to be seen. I read up about why there are a lack of nuts this year and it seems one of two things could explain it. First black walnut trees are susceptible to thousand cankers disease that cause a decrease in nut production and can kill the tree. Or like many fruit/nut bearing trees, 2020 could have been an off year in nut production. Hey 2020 has been off in so many other ways, why not Mom´s black walnut trees as well. Below is a photo of what I should have seen on those trees earlier this year. In addition there is a map indicating in green where black walnut trees grow in the U.S. Wisconsin is on the northern edge of where black walnuts grow in this country. Could that have an impact on the nuts this year? I am not sure.

I mentioned this lack of black walnuts to one of my brothers and he secured seven husk on nuts for me about a week ago. That seemed to be the perfect amount for the 20 yards of yarn I intended to dye. So I started the process by putting these nuts, husks and all into enough water to cover them and left them sitting in this water outside for four days. On the second day the nuts had softened enough that the husks could be squished open to help in extracting the brown color. On the fourth day a wee bit of mould was forming on the topmost nut so I decided it was time to use it. All that needed to be done was strain the matter from the liquid. Below is a photo of that very rare to me dye. This liquid has an interesting fragrance, often described as pungent or spicy. It wasn´t the type of smell you avoid, but it was a musky, nutty smell, but not the pleasant smell of toasted nuts.

After preparing the yarn by putting it in a mordant bath on the stove for two hours I placed the still damp wool in a new bath of the black walnut liquid and heated it to 200 degrees for two hours. The kitchen did have that musky smell that dissipated overnight. When I do this again using a portable hot pad and doing everything outside seems to be a healthier and smarter choice. Here after the dye bath and then standing in the water another 24 hours is my black walnut dyed yarn. (BTW after setting the dye with white vinegar and then washing the wool one last time that pugent smell is gone.)

My first time dyeing with black walnut is done and I really like its lovely medium brown. The process is not difficult and like all dyeing should probably be done outside. Perhaps with a more abundance of nuts next year I can experiment to see if it is possible to get even a deeper brown. Stay tuned for more as the amount of onion and avocado is getting to be enough for more batches of dyeing.