Remember these jars?
They had been fermenting for over a week, and the color of the liquid didn’t change over the last days, so I decided it was time to try them.
The front jar contains the pit and peel from 1 avocado and 1 Tsp salt, the other one the same with the addition of 1 Tsp ammonia. I combined the pit and peel in one dye bath because my earlier attempts didn’t yield different colors with them separated. And this time I blended the pit and peel, carefully and a bit at a time to not destroy the blender.
The much deeper red in the ammonia jar does translate into more color, a reddish brown, on the yarn (in front) than the jar without ammonia (in the back) which just gave the standard beige. Again beige.
No pink this time, maybe because I didn’t heat the avocado before fermentation?
FACTS – AVOCADO PEELS + PITS, BLENDED
Mordant 10% alun
Water Tap
Yarn Supersoft 575 m/100 g
Yarn:Dyestuff ratio 10 g yarn to one avocado
Conclusion Ammonia extracts more color
Possible improvements Boil before fermentation to get pink. Filter out blended avocado before dyeing
At this point, I think it’s fair to say that I have tried a lot of combinations with avocado fermentation of avocado pits, of the peels, and now blending them together and fermenting them with and without ammonia. I’ve achieved a range of colors from beige over pink into brown.
So I do think this concludes my experimentation with this for now. The only thing that remains to be seen is how light and wash fast this is over a longer time.
Dette er det – måske – sidste forsøg med avocado, for nu i hvert fald. Denne gang har jeg blendet skal og sten af avocado sammen og prøvet at fermentere dem i en uge med eller uden ammoniak. Sidstnævnte gav den kraftigste farve i glasset og også på ulden. Men ingen pink denne gang, kun beige og brun.
Why do you add the salt? I’ve just removed a wool skein from a jar of avocado peel with ammonia and water that has been soaking on my deck for 2 years. The color is the same as your brown one, but a darker value .
Hi Kris,
The salt is added to prevent everything from going bad (moldy, rotten) instead of fermenting. But I suppose that as soon as you add ammonia, you don’t really need the salt because high pH also prevents stuff from growing. It seems to me, from trying just once, that ammonia also prevents fermentation (which makes sense, being a bacterial process). In my jar with no ammonia, I had lots of bubbling. In the ammonia jar, none. But the ammonia jar gave more intense color.
It’s interesting that you kept your avocado peel soaking for that long! Does a lot more color develop than what you could get in, say, a month? Do you have any pictures posted somewhere online? It would be interesting to see the color you got
Astrid