Getting Green

There is todays shrooming basket, full of dyers polypores, sulfur tufts, hypholoma fasciculare, and an unidentified polypore...so that was todays fun....
the dyers polypore, phaeolus schweinitizii, became the green above....first I did not put any mordant in as apparently it is high in tannin, so I did some silk/wool blend and it turned a lovely gold in about l5 min....so then I pulled it and added one half tsp of iron, and voila, a beautiful rich green...like I have never had before, I am thrilled.....then the sulfur tufts became this buttery yellow, with an alum cream of tartar mordant....I must admit to being a little of a cream of tartar addict...it does make the wool so soft...and helps dissolve the iron also...whenever I add iron to sadden, hardly, the colour, I also add cream of tartar as it apparently makes the iron dissolve and distribute evenly on the fibre....
of course, I am a babe in the woods on all this, and am just learning more each day, thanks to a lot of folks and books, and the internet...
all I know is that I love being in the woods and bushwhacking and finding treasures, and that I love being able to get color from the things I find...I must keep better notes, as this site is really what I use for a journal....but I have a few notes and need to be a lot more consistent...
am still waiting for the sanguinea to show, nothing yet here...but the chantrelles are beginning...
and the sulfur tufts seem to be peaking right now...as are the young polypores...
so more fun to be had, but I have to figure out how to store these polypores without processing them, as I want to be able to use them in the winter when I have not others to use....drying isn`t really an option they are so large, and I don`t want to cook them up and have a moldy pot of yuk around, as I have no room for that either....
I will dehydrate more dyers mushrooms, like the sanguinea and sulfur tufts, as they are quite easily dried. So the let the season begin...

Mellow Yellows..

1. 
   Mellow Yellows are a combo of phaeolus, pictured on the right, which is my latest picking, of fresh phaeolus schweinitizii, and gives wonderful golden yellows with alum and cream of tartar...although some say cot is not necessary, I definitely notice that it softens the yarns a lot, and I love using it. the other yellow is from the lichen that I previously posted, and it gave up some very clear lemony yellows with tinge of green in it. the combo is wonderful and I happen to love yellows. Yellow does something to all color around it and is always so inviting to the eye...
2. the rains have come finally, last night a good shower, so as my dear dh says, he can hear the mycelium moving....I can smell it, he hears it...lol so manana we shall go gathering. Today is fresh with the rain and a lazy Sunday.. will finish my Elizabeth collar which I love, from Kate Gilberts designs, and perhaps start another in a different color, now that I know I love it... as the mycelium moves....
   

a likely story of lichens

Todays dyeing was with this lichen, which was picked from ponderosa pines in the interior of British Columbia and gifted to me..so I pulled it out and added water and cooked it for an hour and then added mordanted (alum and COT) silk/merino 100 grams and two skeins of kid mohair and I thought I got a generous amount of color so I have pulled the yarn out to cool, added two more kid mohair, and it is cooking now and then I will add 1/4 tsp iron and see what happens ...a light green I am hoping.


I also have some `chicken of the woods` in a pot ..I had chopped this and soaked for several days, not much
colour so I am now cooking and added
a bit of ammonia as I read somewhere I
might get some colour that way, I also
read that it won`t dye..so I shall
experiment.




This is the lichen batch and it is a clear light yellow with greenish hue.
I am also dyeing with some giant knotweed, and have gathered and dried a quantity of this for winter dyeing.

One of those times when I have endless desire to do many projects and only one hand and not enough time in the day...alas, where are those workers to help me out...lol

If you go out in the woods today ....

Your sure of a big surprise....like this lovely thing, phaeolus schwinitizii...and is was young and big, so home to the dye pot. I chopped it up small and cooked for about 1 hour and then strained and added 200 grams of silk/merino, which had been alum and cot'd and then got a lovely gold. I was planning to iron it to get green but the gold was too lovely to let go of..so I will try green next time. as I do love the alchemy...

I am mucho slowed down as I have had a tendon taken out of my index finger and installed in my thumb as the tendon had abraded itself on the break line when I broke my arm last May..so I have beeb knitting with three fingers in my left had, so far three hats and relative sanity...a lot of swearing as it is more awkward than the initial cast as I have two fingers out of play. So I shall try and post, but typing is a pain when are used to being so quick....it is all a lesson in humility......

Subdued or subtle, that is the question

My latest fun was the silk boucle that I had dyed with phaeolus schweinitizii and iron aftermath, looks a bit more olivey in real life, and a muga silk thread on the far right, which is a wild silk from india the color of tussah, and then a kid mohair where the mo dyed in the above bath with no premordant of alum, just the straight iron etc...the nylon did not dye but the mo did, very sweet looking, so I but delica beads on the muga thread and plyed it with the silk boucle, which is the far left, and so hard to see the beads, so sublte as to disappear...but very pleasing to the eye especially in the sunlight.
All is all a fun ply to do and now that my friend, frenchette, picked me up the bead threader from "don;'t ask" store, for sixteen dollars, I can easily string those beads up in moments...it is a great tool, and although the first time I tried it I wasn't impressed, but got better the second time and so acquired one for
ease of beading.
I see quite a bit of these speciality yarns in my future, where the cost is high but the delica beads, and pure silks, and the plying all make it well worth the cost....you don;'t need much in a project to stand out...

And of course, they will all be yarns I
want to work with, so worse comes to
worse, I will have some yummy beaded yarns...the delica beads make a big difference and although costly are well worth the price. Uniform holes, great color spectrum, and small
dramatic statement...bring on the beader...

on the shelf

Here is a great shelf mushroom we found yesterday and dh decided to shelf it up with one of our fav, in the woods, mushroom books..this was the biggest shelf we have seen and it was perfect...and huge and growing on an alder snag, with a pristine white underbelly. This was our second day this week mushrooming and we found some young phaeolus schweinitizii, or butt rot to some more ignorant shroomers, namely me...
and so did some dyeing having read in a book that if you add an afterbath to the usually orangey tan shades of this, you could get an olive green, so that is what I did with the silk boucle...I had already mordanted it in alum and COT and then simmered it for a half hour pulled it out and added 1/2 tsp. of iron, stirred and reentered the silk for about one half hour, then I pulled it and rinsed in hot soapy water...did loose some of the greenish tones but
I think it still has an olivey tone to it,
moreso if you blow this up you can see
the greenish beige of it...so another reason to experiment more...I decided to take Carol Lees suggestion and make up some premordanted fibre and have them bundled and ready to experiment with...so I did some silk and merino sock weight, and mordanted some in alum and cream of tartar and and some in iron, and some with nothing...then I will cut about l foot lengths of these and then tie a little knot on them, l knot for alum, 5 for iron, and none for no mordant, and then tie these three threads into a bundle and then I can always have them ready to drop into a jar of mushrooms etc. to do a small test, also good for on the road, then I do not have to test with large skeins at a time, but can do this simple test for many types of mushrooms.
I am almost looking forward to the rains as this year I want to dry some dyeing mushrooms in the dehydrator..move over food, the revenge of the natural dyer is here....!!!!!!!!

but is it butt rot??

Spent part of the day looking for mushrooms in the woods, and found these...phaeolus schweinitzii, or butt rot I think...I haven't found a young one before, but have dyed with the older ones quite a lot, in fact it was my first experimenting with mushroom dyeing. So it was fun to find a young one...this time I will try playing with the ph, and with iron in the mordanting and see what happens...now I am a little more experienced with the natural dyeing...and I do mean "little" ...there is so much to learn and I am such a novice. Also found some versicolor with soft lavender underneath...will try that, and some rosy gomphidius which we will eat.
So let the fun begin, and the rain as it is going to be a good season, and I will try and collect and dry this year.