dyeing (and playing) with acorns

After making my acorn flour from yesterday's post I was left with a bowlful of acorn shells.  I've seen them discolor water before so I thought I'd see if I could leach enough color out of them to dye wool, rather than just toss them back into the woods.

I put them all in the dyepot with some water and let them steep for a full day.  There was definitely color in the water but I decided to warm them up on a low burner for about an hour to coax more of it out.  Eventually the dye water turned to the color of coffee and I figured it was good to go.  I drained out the acorn shells and plunked my alum-mordanted wool in the warm dye and let it sit for several more hours.  The result was a pale tan, not unlike the color of the nut meat.

I wanted to make a little wool acorn out of this color so I wet-felted a bead and glued it into a cap and you know, it looked just like a little head with a fringe of hair sticking out from under its cap.  I figured I was due for some play time so I went in search of a body and wings and came up with this odd fella.

I'm not sure if he's a bug or a fairy or what.  I'll let my kids decide.  I've left him by the big oak, the one with the fairy pond in the middle, for them to discover.

Since I still had several gazillion acorns in the yard I also decided to play with one of the whole acorns and came up with this bitty ornament, complete with tiny wool mushroom.

It's good to play now and again, isn't it?

I hope you get some play time too.

Have a great weekend.