The next thing I tried dyeing with was wattle seed pods.

I collected these from underneath the stand of Silver Wattles (Acacia dealbata) between the bike path and creek.  These trees were are indigenous to our neighbourhood but not original. For many decades the creek was little more than a storm water drain that factories emptied their industrial waste into. The blue stone bedrock was ripped out for gutter paving. The creek banks were places to dump cars and rubbish.

Image by John Tann, Sydney 2011 Source: WikiCommons

This changed in the late 1980s and a multi-council and community organisation was formed to rehabilitate the creek. European weed species were removed and replaced with indigenous plantings from other local remnant areas. It is a beautiful place of increasing wildness. Sacred Kingfishers and platypus are returning. Instead of facing away from the creek, houses now face towards it. In many ways, these seed pods represent that story.

The pods are formed after flowering, split open and fall from the tree in summer. By late summer you can collect the empty pods.  Well, you can collect them if you carefully avoid the bikes cycling past and avoid the dog poo graciously laid by the path. These waysides are full of hidden dangers.

I had read somewhere these would give me red. That sounded a bit marvelous. A strong colour for a strong story. Perhaps they would have yielded red but I simmered them and got beige, lots of beige.  In her recent catkins dyeing, Annie had the same same beige experience as me.  She explained that with plants that are high in tannin, very gentle heat is required to bring out the colour. Higher temperatures will bring out the tannins which are beige. I now know that wattle bark and seed pods are high in tannin, a chemical used to transform animal skins into leather and a mordant for dyeing.  Wattle bark in fact is the highest plant source of tannin in the world and in the early 1900s, Victoria had an international trade in exporting wattle bark for the leather industry.

I got the beige. The modified skeins are almost indistinguishable except for the iron which gave a lovely soft grey. It is like a cross between mushroom and silver, a warm silver. Amidst the beige, it sparkled like a diamond.

I tried this again with some natural white Ton of Wool Cormo sample I had been sent. I mordanted in the wattle pod water by simmering for 30 mins and then simmered in the 6ml iron water solution for 30 mins. The colour was exactly as predicted!! Oh, the soaring thrill!

This ponderous note taking and modifying is actually more useful to me than the beige symphony would suggest.  As an experienced dyer, Annie has a slightly different approach to me. I am an absolute beginner and these wee experiments are like colour maps of walking maps…revealing places and colours to revisit later.

I could try solar dyeing with these pods next year to see if I can get the red or I can experiment with using them as mordant. But for now, the colour of local tannins by the bike track and rusty old backyard nails never seemed more glorious to me!

You can read about Annie Cholewa’s Wayside adventures here and see all my Waysides posts here.