EUCALYPTUS AND SOY

One of the main things I wanted to accomplish on our trip to Southern California was to gather some eucalyptus leaves. I had other things on my list, too.  But, foremost, I wanted eucalyptus.  In the fantastic book about dyeing fabric using plants and flowers, Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles she talks about eucalyptus quite a bit.  It seems some of the most wonderful colors will come from the warmer climes The author, India Flint, lives in Australia, the land of the weird and the wonderful.  

I prepared some fabric using soy milk.  It actually started to ferment. She says in her book, you can keep this soy soaked fabric for up to a year and it just keeps getting better and better for dyeing.  Hmmmm.

Once I gathered some of the long leaves (and a few of the buds, which I kept separate) and some round leaves from another tree that look and smell like eucalyptus, except they are round shaped, I took them back to the hotel and rinsed them off and spread the damp leaves onto the soy-fabric.

I rolled the fabric up tightly and stuffed them into ziploc baggies.  That was a week ago on Thursday, October 14. I've been trying to keep them warm ever since.

A week later you can smell the fermentation going on, even with the bags closed.  I've got them in a bag by the heater register. Here's how they look now.  You can see some reddish color starting to develop.

A weird and wonderful experiment!