Eucalyptus Bark

A few days ago, I set some Eucalyptus bark to simmer in my slow cooker. Yesterday, I dyed four skeins of wool with the resulting dye bath. First, having strained off the bark, I put three skeins of wool pre-mordanted with alum and one skein of wool pre-mordanted with copper into the dye bath and simmered it on my cooker for half an hour. The smaller, empty pans to either side are ready for the next stage.

After half an hour, I drew off a quarter of the dye liquor in to each of the two small pans, added a pinch of iron to the one at the back of the stove and a pinch of tin to the one at the front, and transferred a skein of the wool that had been pre-mordanted with alum from the large pot into each small pan. The difference in the colour of the different dye baths is clear in the photo. All three containers were left to simmer for another half an hour.

When the liquor had cooled sufficiently, all four skeins were extracted from their respective dye baths, washed with mild wool friendly detergent, rinsed well and hung up to dry. Jenny Dean described the colours obtained from Eucalyptus bark as being greens and beiges, but the colours I extracted from the bark of my tree were shades of brown, just as unexpected as the colours I extracted from the leaves of the same tree. From the left, the skeins were mordanted with alum, copper, alum + tin and alum + iron respectively. I've now used up all my pre-mordanted wool, so I'll need to make another batch tomorrow.