west coast lobsters

Lobsters (hypomyces lactifluorum) fill the pot...that is a sink full. Found a mountain side full of them and have peeled my third batch and here they are...Today, my friend and I went up the mountain for the second time to gather and we had so many we had to take turns carrying the bag....but look at those colors...I did end up adding ammonia to the bath after the peachy tones and voila , instant rose...It changed right before your eyes...so sweet, and now I have peach and rose colors available in the fall...I am thrilled, too thrilled really, it is only wool and mushrooms, but what a rush it can provide.
I threw in the silk scarf and it came out so evenly dyed I was surprised...now I have more on the stove, having washed and peeled the sink full of them, not a pleasant job, a bit buggy and slimy on the hands but well worth it.
I haven't found any sanguinea yet, so perhaps this will have to suffice for the time being, but I am well pleased and will try using washing soda instead of ammonia in future and see if that produces the quick radical results...I don't really like the smell of ammonia on the wool, and have to wash it twice to get the smell out.

Excitement abounds...

Well I am way too excited about today's dyeing, perhaps I have a problem....
To start with I dyed with the peachy one with the hypoloma fasciculare(lobster) which I peeled and put in hot water, mine being alkaline, and then left overnight, it was peachy...then I boiled it and it darkened big time, to burgundy, then I added three skeins of 50/50 silk wool, and voila peachy keen...I am thrilled...not as rosy but more peachy don;'t know whether it was that the water alkalinity was about 8.5 and maybe if I had added ammonia and boosted it , it would be rosier.... I went and gathered more and will experiment next week.....
then I heated up the phaeolus, and added all kinds of lusciousness, silk, cashmere, silk/wool, cashmere silk, and got it a golden yellow, and then added the infamous half tsp. of iron, mixed with a titch of cot...and cooked another 30 minutes or so, and yum.....I can hardly keep my eyes of it...I am definitely a color addict...no doubt....I keep getting up and checking it out...it is alchemy...
And the last photo is the logwood grey and iron where I tried to get a black out of it, no luck but a lovely , darker than this appears, blue deep slatey grey.....another yum, and they all look great together....so it was a major fun day...had my sister with me and she got to see the iron change the phaeolus and was duly impressed..and I got to give up a bunch of yarn to her so it was a good day all around...
and the season has just started...and the rain is coming down..and the mushrooms are coming up....yeh...

Big Butt Rot

I thought that title might get a lot of people coming to the blog, and a lot of disappointment too...lol

I was out today shrooming after a heavy rain yesterday, everything was popping, well not everything, no cortinarius, but the biggest butt rot, phaeolus, I have found. The sun was shining through the woods right onto it. That seems to be how these are found here...and once picked the whole edge turns brown almost immediately so I took this while it was growing, then harvested and now it is coooking in the pot...I will not mordant silk/ just use the natural tannin in this, then I will again add iron, to turn it from gold to green, hopefully...the collar below was made from some lichen from the maple, lungwort, or lobaria pulmonaria...and it was silk boucle, and the"elizabeth" pattern which I really like...very comfy to wear and easy to knit...check it out on Ravelry, I think it is a Kate Gilbert pattern which I purchased...which by the way is way too easy to do with paypal...and you think "oh, what's four =six dollars" all very tempting...and you have it right away...I love the internet..
and then I found a big batch of hypholoma faxciculare, doesn't that just roll off your tongue..lol and they are also cooking. They love to grow on downed alder and they are like weeds here so I found a ton...and the deer don't like them so they leave them alone, in fact not many bugs eat them either...
Then I found what I was really looking for "hypomyces lactifluorum," (another tongue roller) commonly called Lobster, and I got them home, about ten, and then immediately peeled them, and put them in boiling water, some people add ammonia at l Tbsp. but my water if from a deep well and is very alkaline, so no ammonia needed...I guess if I was a "real" dyer I would only use distilled water, but apparently I am not, so what I get is what I get with my high ammonia water, very occasionally I do add vinegar to acidify it, but not often.
Also was attempting to get black silk, without using indigo, and so used some logwood grey extract and added some mordanted with alum silk and wool and then lifted half way through and added iron, but alas deep wonderful purple but not black...
will keep trying.
so let the season begin...i can hear the mycelium talking....