I Love Boston in the Fall...

I just love Boston in the fall. This week, for my new SockPixie colorways, I decided to pause a moment, and just look around me. I even decided to collect and use local black walnuts to overdye the yarn. As always this was a fun adventure, and the new colors turned out to be incredibly rich, and beautiful. The black walnut added a golden depth to the colors.



A lot of you have been asking me how I do this. I first dye the colors by hand, because I love the fact that it gives the skeins a more artisanal look, whith areas that are more deeply colored than others.
For this week, I dyed some warm colors, as well as some cool colors, and separated them into 2 batches, one warm, the other cool.




I took about 2 cups of the soft outer shell of the walnuts, and chopped them into little pieces. I cut 2 simple natural cotton muslin squares, and placed 1 cup of walnut in each, and closed the bundles with thread.




I emersed the wet already dyed yarn (the yarn has to be completely free of residual dye) in water, the warm colors altogther in one pot, and the cool colors altogether in another. In each pot I placed a little bundle of walnuts, and I "cooked" the yarn for about 45 minutes, stirring often, until the colors had reached the golden hue I was looking for.

The results are really worth the effort...Happy Fall to you all!