day three: chemistry

Tomorrow is my birthday, and today I had a lovely visit from my dearest friend, Axel, who is also entering this challenge. He foraged, and brought me gifts only a textile nerd would love: black walnuts, ready to be hulled, and buckthorn bark. Black walnuts make a lovely color- and light-fast brown dye, and when placed in an alkaline bath, buckthorn makes a gorgeous red.

the artist in his natural environment (the garage)

So of course, I set about to make some sample dye baths. They both require some time soaking, so I found a couple of buckets in my mom’s garage (we were hanging out in the garage, as is our wont), washed them out, and started with the buckthorn.

stripped buckthorn bark

amazing what a determined guy can get done on a coffee break

I put maybe a gallon, gallon and a half of lukewarm water in the bucket, along with a lump of washing soda (I let the water run over the lump in my hand as I filled the bucket, as washing soda doesn’t crumble neatly in your hand like borax does). I didn’t have any pH strips, but the water felt slimy, which is a good indication of alkalinity.

Then I dumped in the buckthorn bark and let it sit. After only a few minutes, you could see that the red dye was being released.

that’s not shadow, it really is orange-ish

Next, I needed to process the walnuts. Un-hulled walnuts look sort of like tennis balls, or less-brightly colored limes, and have a rather nice citrusy smell. They need to be smashed or cut to get the nut out and expose the inside to extract the dye. This one only needs water, as walnut hulls are already chock-full of tannins. Walnut is a substantive dye, so I don’t need to mordant the fiber or fabric before dyeing. It does need to be simmered, so I think I’ll let it sit in the water I’m soaking it in, and then bring my camp stove next weekend and simmer it.

I used a 3-lb sledgehammer, and gave each walnut a whack or two before pulling them apart with my fingers. Everything I read about working with walnuts said to wear gloves, and I did, but I don’t think they were quite up to the task. Next time I process walnuts, I think I’ll probably just get dishwashing gloves. Or chemical-handling gloves. The ones that go up to your armpits. I’m not messing around. (Well, I am, but… Anyway.)

food service gloves are insufficient to this task

My mom’s property has glossy and common buckthorn on it, so Axel grabbed his handy-dandy folding saw out of his vehicle and we took down one of the glossy buckthorn trees. He cut it into easy to handle lengths, and then I set about scraping off the bark.

the small branches were a lot easier to scrape

I just used an old putty knife to scrape the bark; the wood is really soft and the bark peeled right off. I probably got a couple of pounds of bark off that one tree. I have one branch left to do. I might leave that and let it “season” in the shed over the winter and see how it scrapes in the spring.

Axel was kind enough to strip the leaves off, and I’m going to let those freeze in the shed over the winter, too, and in the spring we’ll mordant some yarn with alum and see if we get the beautiful clear yellow we’ve been promised.

I put a small swatch of some yellow wool that I bought in a perforated plastic bag (so I could find it easily) and dropped it in the buckthorn before I put it away in the shed. I’m going to take a look at it in the morning and see what we have. Should be interesting — if these work out, I want to try dyeing some fabric for my project. Either way, this was a great way to spend a glorious fall day.