Avocado and Onion Skin Dying

A few months ago I experimented with avocado dying and used alum as the mordant.  That is what was recommended in the information I'd read.  This time I'm going to use vinegar to set the color instead of alum and see what, if any difference there is.  And recently on Rughookers Yahoo group there was some chatter and questions about onion skin dying.  So I thought I'd do another experiment and post this link on Rughookers for interested readers to check out.

Of course today's avocado experiment has the variable on how strong the liquid was that I used before and how much wool for the uptake of the color.  However, it is always nice to have different values of the same color so it will be fun to do the dyeing again.

I've gathered a sampling of reclaimed wool, wool that needs a little color boost and some of the same wool previously used in the other avocado dye project for comparison.

Here is some wool that will be used for the avocado dye pot. Bits and pieces of this and that and wanted to see how it might tone down the bright yellow.  The 4th piece from the left is just like what I used for the avocado before.

This is wool that will go in the onion skin dye pot.  Since the dyes look sorta similar in color inside the measuring cup, thought it might be fun to see the difference in the results from like pieces of wool.

This picture blow shows the avocado liquid on the left, which was achieved by cooking a collection of avocado seeds (with skins) which I halved or quartered in a pot of water.  On the right is some onion skin liquid that I pulled out of my freezer from juice saved from a previous simmering of skins which I put in a nylon stocking.

These are 2 cup measuring cups and will start out using just one cup until I see the results and will add more to each pot as I see fit.  I will post a picture of the results when the dying is done.