Eucalyptus Leaves

In mid-winter the pickings are slim for dyers! There is not much to gather until the daffodils come into flower in March. The Winterbourne Dyers resolved this dearth of dyestuff by gathering apple wood, yew twigs and oak leaves in January. My apple prunings are still soaking (they will need to soak for at least another week before entering the dye bath) and I’ve already achieved some rich brown colours from the churchyard yews. I’ll go hunting around Loughton for oak leaves, twigs, acorns and galls later in the month. 

Meanwhile, yesterday I harvested some Eucalyptus bark (naturally shed) and leaves from the tree in my garden, as Jenny Dean suggests that these can be gathered at any time of year. As I write, the bark is simmering in my slow cooker and yesterday I simmered the leaves for about eight hours. The leaves are supposed to yield rusty-brown or dark red, but apparently this depends on the actual species of tree. I don’t know what mine is, but the dye from the leaves looked like it would turn out to be disappointingly beige. Amazingly, the addition of iron and tin gave me a nice brown and a vivid yellow. From the left, the wool was mordanted with alum, copper, alum and tin, and alum and iron.

The eucalyptus leaves were quite smelly to process. I breathed about five minutes of menthol, reminiscent of Vics VapoRub, followed by several hours of something that smelled acrid and more like cat’s pee! The unpleasant smell lingered, and was only banished after I inadvertently burnt this morning’s toast. Altogether, not an experiment to be repeated.