Monday, September 29, 2008

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...

4 comments:

Bethany said...

Wow, that is an amazing green!

Anonymous said...

Wow great green, what a splash....
Well done.
Frenchette

Helen said...

What a fabulous green! I love it . OOh! I am so envious. I wish I could come msuhroom hunting with you. Thanks for posting such lovely pictures. My dye pot with boring old cochineal & logwood seem so dull now!

Anonymous said...

That is a wonderful green! I'd love to know whether it is light-fast.