Eucalyptus rules

I am sooo impressed with the generosity of the eucalyptus leaves...I had seen some going for a display and asked for the branches when they were through with them and voila, beautiful silk and wool, not to mention the smell in the house...very fragrant. I took the leaves and just soaked them for a few weeks, and then the color of the water was so deep rust and then placed some silk/merino which I had previously mordanted with alum and COT, and just let it sit in the bath for an overnight, and that is the single skein, almost dried...the other is two more skeins that I have soaking in the strained eucalyptus water...I love the color they came out and keep adding more water to the leaves and it seems it is endlessly putting out more color. So I am soaking more leaves. Also have some cherry bark soaking and it is putting out color already. I will try that as soon as I have more mordanted wool finished, and the garden planted...\

I did plant some woad seeds today, which I had received from Kirkoe in Germany, and have some lovely little weld plants in the garden which have spread all over the place. I am concentrating on more plants for dyeing, and will make a plot for them so I can keep track of them in the garden. It is a wonderfully springy day today, and the doors are open and the sun is shining.

Hummers are humming

Here are a few quickie dye batches with acid dyes as I have to squeeze the dyeing in between spring planting and garden clean up ....so these sweet colors were done with the microwave and have yet to be spun.
Spring is happening, although cold, and even snow on parts of the island today, very freaky....
and have tried to find some mushrooms but too early, and too cold. I have some silk/cashmere soaking in mushroom bath, of semi sanquinea, and some soaking in Eucalyptus, and also am experiment with some wild cherry bark. I harvested it off some trees that came done this winter on our land, and so will see what I can get with that. Have found some good data in Jenny Deans "wild colours" dye book, and so have it soaking for now. Can't believe spring is out there happening and it is still too cool to be out there or too rainy or windy...I am missing some of my favourite season, even though I get out daily it is not enough..usually we can work outside at this time of year. However I was spinning on the deck yesterday until the wind carried my roving off the deck.

extreme sheep led art

This is a definite must see, unfortunately couldn't copy the url...but if you go to youtube and put under search, :extreme sheep led art..you will see one amazing demo of sheep and led and dogs, all producing the most stunning video....a must to see....

spring forward

Here are a batch of the latest springy colors....the pinkish ones are cashmere/silk, and merino in the semi sanguinea mushrooms, dried then cooked strained and added some ammonia to pink it up...taupe one is eucalyptus cashmere, the silver is baby stinging nettle, which was a surprise, and the orange is the paramelia sulcata lichen found on downed branches, which I soaked, cooked strained and voila...it is a bit less orangy but still a wonderful color...
and now out for another walk to collect, I mean, stroll through the dye shop of mother nature...
It does make walking even more of an adventure, if not a little graspy, as now when I walk everything looks like a potential dye product. The herring are spawning here now, so the sea life, eagles, sea lions etc. are bountiful, and of course there will be nettles, and lichen, and some dyeing later.
Jenny Dean has a great clear, concise, post on mordanting with Alum and it is worth a look, as I have just made a batch of liquid alum and it is so easy...and now I just pour for 400 gm of wool, 400 ml of liquid alum mixture....voila done... do this dones make it quick and doable...here post on it is very clear...i.e. tsp. which I love, and also the post on her dyeing cochineal and logwood is great. She is such an inspiration.

Curative Cashmere

And here are the results of yesterdays modified skein.....that would be the centre one and it definitely has three colors subtle but not as subtle as the photo...I am thrilled with the results. The skein above, was dyed in the exhaust of the semi sanquinea, and then put iron into it, which gave a beige, one of the many beiges I have learned to love, sort of, and the skein to the right is the Cashmere Cure...that would be cashmere that was premordanted in alum and COT and then put into a strained eucalyptus dye bath....and of course if you buy this, you won't get a cold, you can just wrap it around your neck and snort the eucalyptus vapors which are amazing....I figured if the sea silk is said to help your bones with the calcium ? ( that;s what they say) then here is the cure for the common cold...straight from the alchemists dye pot...lol The colour is amazing, is has a greenish/khaki tone to it and it smells wonderful. Will definitely do this again, and try with some modifiers... so thanks to Jenny Dean and her modifying tricks, her books are also very informative and a great natural dye source...and she is now dyeing with fungus, so I can't wait for the next book.....its like having personal researchers, between Leena and Jenny, they are both very articulate and do great research and note taking, unlike myself, who tends to be way too spontaneous, and never strives to duplicate, so I can certainly appreciate the work these women do....and hope some rubs off on me...I do take notes, but am not really a researcher unfortunately, but there is room for all types in this kind of work...and I do love the gathering and the alchemy involved....like magic getting all these different results...but no book from me in the near future that's for sure...lol

Modified Mushroom Moments

Today was an experiment that hopefully will give good results. I had read in Jenny Dean's blog, this process of modifying with different mordants post dyeing...so here is what I did...with the appropriate picture...can't believe I actually took one of the process, usually I think of that when the process is finished and it is too late. The fibre, silk/merino 50/50 was alum and COT mordanted and then left overnight, actually two nights then rinsed and put in a bath of strained and cooked semi sanguinea mushrooms which I had dried last fall. about a quarter of a baggie (sandwich bag) which I then squished and cooked then soaked and cooked some more, then strained in fine cloth, and entered the mordanted fibre, then cooked for about half an hour, just below simmer...then removed the skein and poured out two bowls of the dye water,(hot) and into one added vinegar (on the left) and the other washing soda....and suspended the middle of the skein above the two bowls, as Jenny suggested, so it does not wick into the yarn...hopefully it will give me three shades of mushroom dyed yarn...so far it definitely looks like two shades, as the washing soda made an instant difference....wonder what a dip in iron would do....oh, that will be for tomorrow....so right now they sit as in the photo, and will leave them perhaps overnight...and take a photo of the skein tomorrow for show and tell..If I could get three distinct tones I would be thrilled as I like the multi colored skeins and usually with the natural dye I have to mix extracts to get multi colors, this should be subtley beautiful.....eternally optimistic...i remain... I actually mordanted about 6 more skeins of cashmere, and silk and cashmere and so far three hours later, have resisted the temptation to dye them all...usually as soon as I mordant I can't wait to dye so as a result the idea of having premordanted fibre waiting to be dyed is a joke around here...I am amazed I have actually waited two hours...no matter how many pounds I premordant it is never enough....what's with that? lol

spring colors

Well here are the latest acid dyes, and I am springing forth into lightness...I just had to do some quick microwave acid dyeing as I wanted an instant hit and had no mordanted yarns ready and this is the result..if you enlarge the pics by clicking on them the real colors will explode. Color is such an amazing meal...it fills the soul and the eyes, and as I mentionned at the guild meeting today, it is almost orgasmic...and I just hang it by the woodstove and love looking at the yarns and roving...and then walk into the other room and return to feast my eyes again...I guess I have a serious color addiction.
and talking to a friend of our obsessions today, and wondering about the balance of it all...seems I would rather be handling fiber and dyeing and spinning and collecting plants, than doing anything else, almost. and it isn't the money that it brings in, but certainly the sales allow me to buy more fibre and make more colors, and so the sales are important but not why I am doing it....I am definitely a fibre addict and there are many of us out there. I wonder where the drive comes from to be so obsessed with dyeing, spinning, and collecting plants. It is certainly embedded deeply in our souls and must be some kind of deep genetic impulse that is at work. I am always thinking of the fibres, what I will do next, how I will process, how important that is in the grand scheme of things...etc etc. and there are so many of us out there!
so the pondering go on, as I plan for another spin session, and have a pot dyeing on the stove as I write, and wonder how I will store the next bundle of fibre...and find balance in my life....

Variations on Obsessions

Here are my lates obsessions the past few weeks...the knitted neck warmer which I got off of the net I love....it is 50/50 silk/merino, so soft, and keeps my neck warm as well as hiding those double chins...what more could you ask?

The walnut dyed wool is a combo of brown merino, and blue face tops and they were plyed and are lovely and soft....I loved the walnut dyeing and will do more next year....and then as I was starving for brilliant colors some acid dyed superwash merino and I micro dyed them after I had skeined them off a cone in 50 gram skeins...I hadn't done any acid dye for quite awhile and the drab winter weather just had me reaching for it. and the colors were fun to play with so I am quite happy with the colors and have been spinning some roving from it also.... Never say never...like"I'll never dye with acid dyes now I have rediscovered natural dyeing" but I didn't give all my acid dyes away so I must have known that I would be using them again....

I do love all the natural dyeing but a hit of brilliance is fun also...Not that you can't get brilliance with naturals but it was quick and fun to do...

I am learning how to spin fat yarns again...which is always a challenge as it entails slowing down the spinning wheel...and that mean paying attention as I am quite a quick person naturally, and so the meditative spinning is a challenge. My friend Judy does this type of spinning because if you are going to be selling, you don't want to spend hours doing a fine yarn and get the same price if you spent a half hour spinning thick yarn...also people love the thicker yarn and sales for that are good...especially using the tops as they are incredibly soft and I am doing 85 grams, and getting about 110 metres of fibre and it is a good practice after spinning for over thirty years to try something different.

Have more yarns mordanting and will be doing some dried carrot tops next week, as the well is high now, so have to take advantage of lots of water...

noxious weed!! sweet

Well here are my latest dye jobs, and here is the noxious weed, japanese knotweed, which apparently has endless varieties, this being one called polygonum cuspidatum, and apparently is an incredibly invasive weed, and grows in one spot here on the island in noxious abundance.I harvested these gigantic leaves last fall, and dried them, and here is the wool from that, it is the one skein on the left, premordanted with alum and cot, and then dyed ..a wonderful tone, and the two on the right of that are done with the dermocybes, (semi sanguinea) same mordanting as above...I almost like the one on the left more, as it is stronger in color, but perhaps in need to do the mushroom dyeing with more shrooms to really compare...they have more pinkish tones, and did add extra ammonia to them to pink them up some...although my water is very alkaline, I added even more, and they went pinker.
so that is the latest, although I did get a great tip, from renaissance dyer on ravelry, from France with a great blog, www.renaissancedyeing.com named Andie and she has a great site for natural dyeing and awakened me to cold mordanting with alum, which I will try with my BFL tops as they seem to get to compacted with the hot mordant then dyeing process, so I am going to cold mordant them and save at least one stage of heating and hopefully maintain its loftiness.
I like that lofty word. I did a little acid dyeing this week, just about blew my eyeballs away with its brightness. I forgot how brilliant they can be, but messy really messy, and have to do it outside and pay attention and its chemical and sometimes I just crave its instant color... I am such a "color ho".. lol

OOO obama

No pics in this post, but had to say what a wonderful moment it is for all of us with the newly elected...people say "but can he deliver.'..I say" he has already delivered," delivered hope for all. Onward and upward. Who would have thought an election of U.S. president could have me weeping into my coffee at eight thirty in the morning. Sweet !

Natural Acid

Catchy title eh? Of course its all about dyeing and what we have here is natural osage blue face leceister plyed with acid dyed blue face leceister tops....haven't done any acid dyes for about a year but all of a sudden I needed instant vivid colors and that's what I got, but it went so well with the yellow osage that I twisted them up together, sacrilege perhaps, but a wonderful combination...

and for the phaelous schwienitzii, or butt rot as I am apt to call it, just for the shock value, is the green roving...I had saved some young phaeolus

and dried it and so was curious if I could get greens by adding an after dip of iron ...so I used half tsp. of iron and lifted the brown roving out and added the iron and voila sort of khaki, not as nice a green as I have had when dyeing over the fresh phaeolus, (which gives golden color) but definitely khaki /olive green. so now what to do with it....I am spinning more and enjoying the colors and the combining...I also am enjoyed Jenny's Dean's new dyeing book, a must for all of us obsessed dyers, lots of good tips and small and compact for carrying. I love adding to the library of natural dyeing. So tomorrow I will mordant a lot of yarns and prepare to dye with some sanguineas....I can hardly wait....now for some more natural acid.....been there done that...

Tear down the walls, bring in the light...happy solstice...all

May we break boundaries, tear down walls, and build on the foundation of goodness inside each of us. May we look past differences, gain understanding, and embrace acceptance. May we reach out to each other, rather than resist. May we be better stewards of the earth, protecting, nurturing, and replenishing the beauties of nature. May we practice gratitude for all we have, rather than complain about our needs. May we seek cures for the sick, help for the hungry, and love for the lonely. May we share our talents, give our time, and teach our children. May we hold hope for the future very tenderly in our hearts and do all we can to build for a brighter tomorrow. And may we love with our whole hears, for that's the only way to love.......

I read this on a blog and thought it was worth reading for the new year, Christmas, Solstice, or whatever you celebrate...cheers

snow capped

Snow capped takes on a whole different meaning ...here are some lepiotas having their second coming this fall, but alas a little deep freeze happening here, thus the end of my mushroom hunting for a bit...

its sad, as I love to go shrooming, but once the snow is gone I will go again, even just for other lichens etc...

the above pics are of lobster mushrooms, hypomyces lactifluorum plied with a brown merino, and the other is some weld that a friend gave me she had pulled some small weld plants a few months ago, and found them all shrivelled, gave them to me and voila still colored the wool...this is alum mordanted blue face, and is a soft yellow.

I also just received some amazing wensleydale fleece from Britain. As the pure wensleydales are not available here, and these have locks about 10 inches so so sweet...I will use these in scarves and boas, etc. as they are way too long for me to tease and card and the curls are best untouched except to dye them...so I have about a couple of years supply now. Such amazing sheep, they must look wonderful in the pasture, with their amazing coats.

So blessings to everyone for the holidays, six more days til the days start to get longer., which is amazing . It is definitely wooly weather here now. feeding the fire, spinning cashmere and cultivated silk, could it be any sweeter, well yes, if my sailor was home feeding the fire, but its a great second best...

Ramaria formosa? for dyeing for mosa...

Here is the find of the day that I brought home, I have seen this many times in thewoods, and it is a ramaria, but does it dye purple, that is the question....I hope this is the one, I have some soaking with a titch of ammonia, hoping the bring forth some color, and it is bringing up rusts, not very purple, but I shall pursue this as it is said in :"all the rain promises" mushroom book, that purple should be had with this coral mushroom....
There are a lot of ramaria here on the West Coast, in a variety of color, some white, others greyish, and then this salmon colored one...so far it is giving off a salmon color in the ammonia and water, I will also try some in vinegar to see if that makes a difference to what the color gives off.. I have been busy with two local Xmas fairs, one down one to go, and have been labeling and packing and selling. Also getting things ready for galleries, and shipping wool, all a very busy season, but know it will come to a grinding halt in January.
I have several endeavours on the table for January, perhaps combining some cedar bark weaving and some gourds, and get back into weaving bark for awhile...of course I can always use my scraps of cedar to dye wool...the problem is that wool is so, so soft and comfy and compared to anything else is a cushy form of creativity and is very warm and comforting. Cedar bark is wet, as you have to work wet, and gourds are wonderful but hard, and carving them and burning them isn't nearly as comforting as fibre.
So I will have to push myself to move out of my "comfort" zone...and can't see myself leaving wool alone for too long...it is addictive.
So off to try more experiments, and oh, I added a few new blogs on my site, one is Jenny Dean, dyer and writer and yarnpiggy, who I love, and Mrs. Quimby who is always entertaining...
you might want to check out Rick Mercer;s video on yarnpiggy, all about ousting smarmy Harper....with a coalition government to replace him, I am all for that...
so onward and upward...and into the dye vats...

oops

here is the site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVRfVEONxJQ

A must see

Found this a must see, beautiful work and a lot of work...the women were amazing to watch , never again will I complain about carrying a few colors...lol

Mycelium blossoms still abound

Loving this new stitch, easy yet looks like I'm a very good knitter, just my type of mindless knitting....Faggot stitch, I am in love....

Not much posting lately as I have been working towards two Xmas fairs here, and so am busy labeling (not my favourite job) and then of course the sun was out so I was in the woods gathering the sanguinea and semi sanguinea like a mad fool...I would go for an supposed hour and three hours later emerge from the woods bags full of dyers mushrooms...I know the first frost will do them in so I have to gather now.

Will be doing a lot more dyeing after the fairs and have lots of dried dyer mushrooms to experiment with..even some blue tooth fungus..and some phelledon...very exciting.
And more on the newsy front Jenny Dean, author of a few of my favourite natural dyeing reference books, has a blog. http://www.jennydean.co.uk/wordpress/index.php and she has some great posts already. One on woad dyeing which I intend to do next year as I just received some woad seeds from Germany..I will trade her for Weld seeds.
So I will post more pics later, and have some "fair" stories to tell. Let the mycelium spread and the mushrooms bloom on...

Dermocybe madness!!

So many dermocybe, but still don't know the difference...do know northern, as this is definitely deep red stipe, gills, the works...but as for the others there seems so many choices ..Today I picked sanguinea, semi sanguine (I think) and other sanguinea....some are yellow stipes with red gills, some are bright yellow gills and stalks with beige cap, some are curled at the edge of the cap, with yellow gills and beige stalk...I am so confused...will I ever learn the different types, doubtful, but I love the colors, and I am dyeing with them and drying them...here are some of the coral tones I got with the semi sanguinea, and my somewhat alkaline well water. The dermocybes are big and abundant right now here... I got that pile in a few hours of hiking in the woods...of course abundance is relative, but I was thrilled. And I have been trying to separate the kinds, hugely frustrating, and drying them in the dehydrator and they dry quite quickly.
Did some cashmere today in hypomyces lactifluorum, (lobster) and it turned out very nice. Will show soon as it dries. All in all a gillfull day. lol

Here are the three types I found today. Could be six types you never know, but they are the right types I am sure of that. All will give me wonderful colors.

Oh Oh Oh Oh Obama!!!

This is indeed a day that was great to wake up to....I am thrilled, excited, goosebumped and generally the world is a better place today and hopefully for awhile. I can't believe how nauseous I was yesterday while waiting for the outcome..and how tearfully thankful for that outcome...I can only imagine what an American must feel..

So while I waited I went shrooming to calm my angst, and that was a five hour bush whacking journey, which turned out very sweet.. Western Red Dyes were found, and chantrelles to eat with dinner...Now the semi sanguinea are drying in the dryer, along with some sanguinea I found today....here is a pic of yesterdays semi sanguinea along with a sweet faced tree frog ...so all in all it was a perfect day.

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....

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.