I've been collecting avacado pits with the help my family, friends, and co-workers. So far, I have enough for a couple of experiments. The first of which I started yesterday!
The first experiment is just cut up halves or chunks of avocado pits (did you know they have seams?) in a solution that is 1 part ammonia and 4 parts water. This picture above is a close up of the first halved avocado pit in the solution. The jar I'm using I got for maybe $3 at the local thrift store. It has a nice cork top that keeps out the smell of the ammonia.
The plan is to keep the jar in the sun (see nice living peace lily next to it!) for the next three days. I'm hoping it will get a neat reddish color on the wool I have but we'll see.
I took this photo about a half hour later and you can already see an orange tint to the water.
This was last night before I went to bed. The water was very orange!
The next morning it looked like a reddish iced tea!
I just took this picture and it is very dark. I'm hoping to use it tomorrow!
For the other 20+ avocado pits I have, I plan on just boiling them. The entire experiment will involve putting some wool in alum as an mordant, some in iron (thanks, SOS pad!). I'll then put one alum, at least, in the boiled pits and one in the ammonia solution. For the iron, it will also be one in the boiled and one in the ammonia. I'm really curious as to what range of color I'll get from these.
I also almost have enough onion skins for some fun dyes and I will boil a red cabbage to get a neat blue or even pink dye.
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