I beat out the snow showers yesterday by cooking up some contact dyed clothing on Monday. Unbundled them yesterday and am loving the results! Still need to be rinsed/washed.
The real surprise came from the avocado skins and seeds. Normally I get a nice green from the skins and a salmon color from the cut seeds. This time – blue with just a hint of salmon! Thinking it might have something to do with the egg whites I dipped everything in, but that is not clear just yet.
I so love the magic and surprise in the dye pot!
When you get back, I want to spend time with you and learn something about natural dying. I know nothing about it and it looks absolutely fascinating.
Gin – the spending time art is fabulous! The natural dye part is fun – and you WILL be hooked!
Wow that looks really cool! To paraphrase – its like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get…happy surprises!
Absolutely happy ones!
Was there iron in the bundle? I find it makes the avocado pips go to purples
Yep, rusty nails, but I’ve done that before without the blues showing up. Lots of variables to sort out:: using dye bath that had been wintering outside (lots of freezing and some thaws), cooking it outside on a day of cooler temps (in the low 40s F), using a pot whose bottom had rounded out due to the frozen dye bath (which I didn’t realize until after I was finished) so the water temp never got as high as I thought it was going to, cooked it longer (about 4.5 hours) to compensate for the cooler air temp, used an egg white dip when I realized I didn’t have any soy milk on hand and I wanted to try an added protein on a synthetic material to give it every advantage of working. The total combination worked!
judy–you and gin could take a road trip north………we could play…………
Or…we could meet in the middle. 🙂
Velma and Gin – I’ll let you two work out the ‘where’ and we will set up a ‘when’ after this Oz trip!
“woo hoo ” is the right term…its magic anyway you look at it
Thanks, Wendy!
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Beautiful. You always continue to amaze!
Thank you!
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