Butternuts=golden brown

This is a butternut. A sticky, smallish nut that grows on butternut trees, of which we have several, and I collected almost a dozen of them for the dyebath. According to what I read, the green hulls are what you are after, but I had almost 2/3 of the nuts that had browned up on the ground before I collected them, and it still seemed to work just fine.

I soaked them for a day, then simmered for an hour. I used our tap water, which contains iron, but in this case the effect was to intensify and darken the color, which was fine with me.

I strained out the nuts and nut debris, and simmered the wool yarn in the liquor for a hour or so. It took the color almost immediately, and this time the bath seemed to exhaust, leaving a very light liquid behind, so I didn't bother trying to save it for another go, although the directions state that you should try again with the saved nuts...

And....viola! This nice color is going to be a pair of socks for my awesome brother-in-law.