I've been "dyeing" to try this!

This morning, I decided to cut work for an hour, and Atley and I gathered walnuts! We took them out to the driveway and smashed them with a rock, carefully choosing the ones without maggots in them (ewww!) and giving those back to the squirrels. Atley was a big helper and carried the bucket for mommy, and even picked some off the tree! When we were done, without prompting, he said, "Thank you for the nuts, Mr. Tree!"



Then, we poured boiling water over the hulls and let them steep for an hour until the water cooled down.



Then, I added the yarn and let that steep for about an hour and a half to 2 hours. I did add just a tablespoon or so of vinegar, just to be on the safe side. I had taken some of the hulls out to make the yarn fit. (And dyed my arm!) Atley told me "Thank the nuts momma." Do I have another inherently pagan child coming up?



I took the yarn out, rinsed it (this time, I remembered I had leftover gloves that the midwife didn't use when Charlie was born still laying around), and here's what I got!



It's starting to look a little more chocolate-like now that it's drying some. For future reference: Strain hulls or put them in cheesecloth. There are little flecks of hull strewn throughout my yarn, but it looks like that should shake out fairly easily when it dries.

Yay! I'm so excited, though. I can see I'll be doing more dyeing in my future!