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messy

yesterday i hulled black walnuts... without gloves. not recommended ;) what does one do with a bucket of walnut hulls? i dug around in the stash & found a skein of oatmealish color Harrisville Designs yarn, off wound it from the ball back to a skein (the

6 year old really enjoyed this), boiled 4 gallons of water, & headed outside. i twisted the skein so it wold both stay together & fit into the bucket of hulls. then i poured the boiling water into the hulls, dropped in the yarn & used the pot i boiled the water in to push the yarn under. then i went & fixed the tarp over the hay stack & took photos of the damage to the tractor from a branch blowing down on it, & started dinner (turkey, yum!). i got back to the yarn about 2 hours later, fished it out, shook off the bigger bits of hulls & took it to the washer to rinse. i first soaked it briefly with some soda ash, spun it out, soaked again in plain water to check if the dye was still running (it wasn't) & spun it out again. untwisted the skein & dried it on the drying rack in the dryer on low heat. it's now on the swift awaiting rewinding into a ball. the color is amazingly even for having been such a tightly twisted skein. it's not as dark brown as my hands are... i'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. i think i'll get some more yarn to toss in the dyepot. lee
Reply to
enigma
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I have a 3# bag of dried walnut hulls that a man sent me several years ago in exchange for a scarf and cap dyed with same. I've been using the same handful of hulls in the dyepot for that whole time.

Alum mordant brightens the finished color. Iron mordant (boil a piece, use the water to presoak) darkens it substantially. Salt is a good leveller.

Reply to
WoolyGooly

WoolyGooly wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

i think i'll freeze this bucket when i'm done playing for now. of course, i'll have another huge load of hulls next year, because i have the trees :) do you know if chestnut (American) hulls yield a dye? i know hickory does, but the squirrels are way ahead of me on the hickory :p

if i boil the water in a cast iron pot, does that work? i can boil fabric or cotton yarn before dyeing... i think i can boil wool as long as i don't have a sudden temperature change, right? the rapid change & agitation is what causes felting? doesn't alum make a greenish brown with walnut hulls?

lee

Reply to
enigma

Wow, you mean there are actually still American Chestnuts alive and well? I would expect the hulls to produce some sort of dyestuff, no opinion as to what colors you might get though.

Yep, that should work. I wouldn't boil the wool, just boil the water for a while and then soak the wool in it.

I produced a very bright yellowish-brown using alum with my walnut hulls. Maybe the species of walnut will change the final color. I

*think* I have black walnut hulls but I'm not positive. The honey that came with the hulls certainly tasted of black walnut...
Reply to
WoolyGooly

When I was a kid, my cousin thought it was great fun when we 'city slickers' came in to get us to hull walnuts and then laugh like crazy when we couldn't get our hands clean.

Reply to
cozyhomelife

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