It’s been too long since my last post. Papermaking mushrooms can be found year-round, so I’ve been collecting and processing them, then when time allows, I can continue to play with papermaking.

This is a conk – Fomitopsis pinicola – mentioned in an earlier post as the one that makes the strongest paper and which I use as a base when making mushroom bowls.

Sometimes its appearance is paler, as shown here. I like to find them when they’re very young – they’re white and look like little marshmallows growing on the side of a tree or log. I keep track of these  “nurse trees” in my internal GPS – I may have trouble remembering things, but my brain has imprinted the locations of special mushrooms!