Since I'm not working in thrift anymore (for the time being), I'm on a roll with thinking about reusing fiber, and also scavenging. This morning walking Astro, the dog I'm house sitting, I picked up some freshly fallen black walnuts---I've always wanted to try dyeing with them.
I also weirdly like their acrid, bitter smell---they remind me when I was little, one year I helped my Missouri grandfather gather them in burlap sacks to sell for pennies. I thought this was fun. We also took step ladders to pick persimmons.
I never knew this man, my mother's father, well. He was pretty disengaged, and doing these couple things with him are almost my only memories of enjoying him.
Note: Black walnuts are poison to dogs, so don't let yours eat them, like Astro wants to. Cicadas, however, are not poisonous, so if your dog eats one, like Astro did yesterday, don't worry.
Looked it up, and dyeing with black walnuts is quite easy--in fact, if you've ever had dealings with them, you know the trick is to keep them from staining everything!
"How to dye yarn with black walnuts":
basically you just crack the walnut casings, boil them up in a nonreactive pan, and plunk stuff in the pot.
I also weirdly like their acrid, bitter smell---they remind me when I was little, one year I helped my Missouri grandfather gather them in burlap sacks to sell for pennies. I thought this was fun. We also took step ladders to pick persimmons.
I never knew this man, my mother's father, well. He was pretty disengaged, and doing these couple things with him are almost my only memories of enjoying him.
Note: Black walnuts are poison to dogs, so don't let yours eat them, like Astro wants to. Cicadas, however, are not poisonous, so if your dog eats one, like Astro did yesterday, don't worry.
Looked it up, and dyeing with black walnuts is quite easy--in fact, if you've ever had dealings with them, you know the trick is to keep them from staining everything!
"How to dye yarn with black walnuts":
basically you just crack the walnut casings, boil them up in a nonreactive pan, and plunk stuff in the pot.
Black walnut trees can also be toxic to other plants, esp. those in the nightshade family, like tomatoes.
ReplyDelete(I don’t know this on my own: an arborist warned us.)
It's easy to believe these intense oozy nuts would have a deleterious effect on other growing things.
ReplyDeletethe nuts taste good when dry...
ReplyDeleteinteresting that they are toxic to dogs...like chocolate
L&M's earlier terrier ate a pound of Christmas nuts and almost died from pancreatitis.
ReplyDelete(But then, he only weighed 20 lbs himself, so maybe eating 1/20th of his body weight of anything would have been dangerous.)
Anyway, luckily he survived, but emergency care for him cost more than your car repairs (as I see on your blog).
--Fresca