Selle's Tree Yarn

  

The yarn at the front is Selle's Tree yarn.  I found photographing the yarn with the original colour gives a truer colour in the photograph.  The yarn is quite a pastel shade of brown, actually it is skin-toned.  Dyed from the leaves, nuts and bark of a Mellaluca (Paperbark) tree, Selle's tree.   Selle was a dog we found at the RSPCA in Canberra where we were living in the late 1980's.  She had been there quite a while and was about to be put down, so we couldn't let that happen and we took her home.  Selle is on the left in the photo, Basil is on the right.  She was a mix of Silky and Australian terriers, is our guess.  Basil was a Silky terrier.  When we first got her she was terribly neurotic and very stressed at everything, she used to hoard food and hated men.  Poor thing, we don't know what she had been through.  She gradually trusted us and became a very loyal and loving dog.  She lived until she was 18.  I thought she might go back to her neurotic ways as she got older, but never did, even when she went deaf and blind, she was content.  When she died we buried her in the nature strip and planted a purple flowering Mellaluca, a lovely tree.  The electricity company came around to trim the street trees and I thought it would be a good thing to dye with, so I did.  On the left is an 8ply alpaca/merino mix and on the right 8ply merino.