This is the pits!

So, onto the avocado pits!

A lot of the pits were freezer burned/freezer dried? Well, in the freezer for a long time.

I ended up with about 24 ounces of pits, that were chopped in half, and then chopped into at least 1/8ths after that (more if the pits were bigger, less if the pits were smaller.)

One thing I learned from the peels was that the 3:1 ratio was probably too much wool (12 ounces peel to 4 ounces wool). I think I would have gotten a better color with a 4:1 or even a 6:1 ratio.

So, I upped the dye stuff to wool ratio for the pits. I've read that this should produce a rosie beige. We'll see.

I'm not mordanting the wool for this, as there are (according to the internets), enough tannins in the pits to dye without mordants. I figured why not give it a try and see what happens.

Chopped pits are in the pot, with ample water. They were on medium heat, and have been turned down to low. Going to let them simmer for probably an hour and then cool slightly before straining and adding the wetted wool.

Part of me wants to just add the wool to the pits, but there's a lot of small, saw dust like stuff from chopping up the (very dried) pits. I think the color will be better if there's contact between the dye stuff and the wool, but there's also larger chance of the dye stuff getting mixed up in the wool, meaning more time combing. (But I have to do that anyway, so I'm tempted to just say screw it and throw the wool into the dye pot with the dye stuff.)

Avocados!

So, I've been collecting avocado peels and pits from friends for ages. I'd love to say how long, but I honestly can't remember.

The Dear Husband has been hinting that he'd like some of the freezer back from avocados (as well as yarn), so I got around to taking a few bags out.

A lot of the peels had been in the freezer for a while. Some of the pits were rock hard from freezer burn. And I scraped a lot of remaining avocado from the skins. (Note to self - wash the peels before putting them in the freezer. That helps with the ones I've done, but not the ones I've gotten from other people.)

So, with the peels, I scraped what avocado I could off the peels, and chopped/tore them up into nickel to quarter sized pieces.  I ended up with about about 12.5 ounces of avocado peel, and used about 4 ounces of wool (cheviot, mostly, but might have some other breeds in there.)
Wool was mordanted with normal amount of alum and cot (2T alum/1.5 Cream of Tarter)

The dye was strained using an old cotton bedsheet, because of all the avocado bits that were loosened. The bedsheet was chosen over cheesecloth because of the tighter weave. The avocado bits were really small, and the worry was that it would manage to get through the cheese cloth.

After straining, I resoaked the peels adding 1.5 c of baking soda added to dye pot after a while. The extract did become deeper. I added a cup of baking soda to the wool and in process dyeing.

After about 45 minutes, I strained the second extract into the dye pot with the wool.