The Magic of Avocados

I love avocados! I could eat them every day. They are yummy sliced on a tomato sandwich, smashed into spicy guacamole dip, diced into gazpacho soup, or drizzled with olive oil and served alongside of fruit. The past year, I have been saving the skins and pits from every avocado I have eaten. I washed them well, and then popped them into a zip lock bag. After a year’s time, I had several bags of them in my freezer. Yesterday, I decided it was time for them to work their magic in my dye pot.

Avocado skins and pits simmering in the dye pot.

I set them on the stove top to simmer for several hours. A strange odor swirled its way out from under the lid to the pot, filling the house with an aroma unlike any I had ever smelled before. By midday, though the dye bath looked ready, I was not quite sure if I wanted to put a skein of my yarn in the pot. One time, several years ago, I had experimented with using purple cabbage as a dye material. My yarn reeked of cabbage, and it never washed out. I finally reminded myself that “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and so I put a skein of my sock yarn into the pot. The yarn had been mordanted with alum and cream of tartar ahead of time.

After an hour of steaming in the dye bath, the most beautiful salmon color came out of the pot! I immediately put in a second skein which produced a lighter shade of salmon pink!

Yarn dyed with avocado skins and pits.

The first skein of yarn is slightly darker than the second one.