The past two summers I have played around with naturally dyeing wool yarn. My parents have a massive black walnut tree in their backyard, so the majority of what I’ve dyed has been with those walnuts (and there is currently an entire freezer’s worth at their house for the next batch right now).

The first summer I also tried yellow onion skins, acorns + iron, and avocado pits. The yarn I used was Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks. Knitting with it wasn’t my favorite, but I like that it can easily pair with Harrisville Designs‘ Shetland and Highland, which I use a ton.

Then last summer I bought some dye materials from Maiwa. I bought indigo, cochineal, madder, and goldenrod. The goldenrod smelled amazing as it was cooking. I haven’t totally figured out what I’m going to do with most of this yarn. This batch was using bases from Dyer Supplier and was a lot of bases I don’t usually work with – singles, some super bulky, some super fine, camel content (drape-y) – so I’ve been struggling to figure out what to knit. However, the colors I got are amazing. I also dyed some spinning fiber I had laying around which I have yet to spin. I’ll probably use it to make rolags since each color is only a small amount.