OMG ess

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/design/23spiders.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1 Found this on another site and it is very amazing....hope you enjoy

Pining for Sarcodon

Well the pic on the left is my rather beige hawk wing, sarcodon, which apparently was not found under a Pine tree, which is why it is yet again, a lovely shade of beige...lol...apparently the sarcodons which there are a few types, often give this beige, unless they are the correct type which is found under Pine trees...as I did not pick these or know this, I was ever hopeful for blue, alas, my search continues....

now the one next to it, the orange beige in the same photo, is coreopsis flowers, soaked way tooo long, but lovely in spite of myself... the sweet buttons of shrooms on the top are the sulfur tufts hypholoma fascicular, which I will be returning to pick tomorrow...They are such a lovely clear yellow dye producing shroom...
and the other two photos, are the phaeolus schweinitzi, or dyer's polypore, or butt rot, and these are quite the array of colours...the brightest yellow was from young ones chopped and soaked and then brought up to heat and then let sit overnight, strained, then wetted wool added, then again brought up to heat and taken off and sat overnight...so gold, the brightest yellow yet, the duller one beside it, was from older specimens, and cooked too long I think..."they" always say that with yellow you can dull it by boiling, perhaps this is why it is dull or perhaps it is the fact it is older, its a "crap shoot" so I am guessing...

the wonderful greens are all from the same phaeolus, but with a titch of iron and cot added after they were cooked...like 1/4 tsp, ferrous, and 2 tsp of cot...insta greens which I love....this could be one of my favourite polypores but I am a novice so who knows what is awaiting for me out there...and if it rains I will be out there again.....I do love the lobsters and cortinarius...I have many bags of cortinarius dried from last year, but am saving them until I have this years stash...

so the rains are coming I hear...and we are waiting.

Hawks wings flying

Look what arrived at my house today, Sarcodon Imbricatus, (hawk's wing) noted for its blue wool dyeing capabilities...ever hopeful..after reading several articles and Leena's blog and Ravelry posts on the subject, it sounds like a veritable crap shoot, but Carole said she had luck with it as long as it is older, and cooked with high ph, right from the start, so I have them in the pot, and wool and silk is mordanting, and tomorrow the big test. Will it be green or blue, or greenish blue, I am definitely hoping for blues and I will post. Have been finding a lot of dyer's polypores, and am experimenting with that and getting some lovely greens etc...and sages and now am only picking the very young and will see what that gives....so I will post pics manana...the sun is out it is 25Celsius and life is sweet...if only shrooms would come out in the sun that would be a perfect world...

Black Eyed Susan , Return of the Butt Rot

Return of the Butt Rot, Phaeolus Sweinitizii, 2009.
This was my first venture into the woods in quite some time, as my foot has been f......! unfortunately, but today, managed a forage and voila, Butt Rot. It was a young, spongy, still vibrant butt rot, and so I chopped it up, put it into a pot of hot water, cooked it for several hours, strained, and added the above silk/wool, and kid mohair, both which were unmordanted. It turned a lovely yellow, but who needs more yellow, not I apparently, so I let it soak, not cooking the wool for several hours, then lifted the wool, added one quarter teaspoon of iron, with l tsp of cream of tartar, which is suppose to even out the iron results, and it turned a wonderful green almost immediately...Left it for an hour or so, then rinsed...I do have alkaline water at 8 and so this does influence my dyeing..I just use it anyway , and allow for that alkalinity, not being a purist it doesn't matter to me, and it is easier for me out of the tap...not that I am doing a research paper on this subject so 8 alkalinity is okay for my needs...so if using this recipe you might want to take this into account...or not....

]phaeolus schweinitzii....fresh picked and more to come as we found young ones budding forth at the base of other fir trees

Fall is falling

Waiting for the rains, and the mycelium to start running and gathering of mushrooms for dyeing...so far nothing to pick and dye with but this was some tussah silk I had dyed with sanguinea mushrooms last year and then I plyed it with some large loop mohair...so sweet. Not much on the dyeing front, as life is just starting to settle in after a mad summer of markets and wool sales and working. This was a great year for wool sales, and I had lots of admiration for the natural dyed yarns. Have done some woad dyeing lately and if I could find the damn files I would post some pics.... the woad was a success, although somewhat finicky, I did get some lovely blues. It was the first time I had dyed with woad from my own garden, and I did about l2 plants, I followed the instruction in Jenny
Dean's book on Natural Dyeing, and did try to do the after bath with the left over leaves but to no avail, and no color. I will post when I find the woad pics until then I can almost hear the mycelium awakening.