- Phaeolus, three mordants
I’m finding so many beautiful dyer’s polypore this year, and the variations on gold are never-ending! I put these mordanted rovings in the dyepot together, knowing that the iron might affect the colours on the other two, which were mordanted with alum and copper. And it did, but not in a bad way. The colour produced by two good-sized clusters was so rich and strong that the iron’s “saddening” effect added some depth to the gold of the alum roving and to the rust brown of the copper one. (The iron roving is dark green.)
And then there’s the brilliant gold that took my breath away . . . this came from another two fresh clusters of dyer’s polypore, with enough pigment left over to have an exhaust dyebath (the wool on the right).
The best time of the year, without a doubt.
SHROOMWORKS 
I’ve been experimenting with dyeing fiber with different mordants in the same pot. Starting to think of it as part of the design process; pre-mordanted with a main color and smaller skeins of secondary colors, all mordant controlled, for a stranded-knitting design, a Fair Isle hat, for instance.
Found a mystery mushroom — yellow cap, purple-gray gills, yellow stem, not decurrent, red/brown spores, webbing on the smaller; produced a similar range of colors as you’ve shown above.
I was very sleepy when I wrote this last night, and I forgot to say how lovely.
I’ve learned so much from reading about your work. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment – it’s all a learning experience. Any idea what your yellow mystery mushroom might be?
Gorgeous colorway. Greens have largely eluded me so you can bet I’ll be trying an iron mordant with my next Phaeolus. We’ve had a long stretch of dry weather here so my gathering has been halted, but next year for sure.
I did find a new-to-me mushroom a few weeks ago that I’m calling a dog’s nose fungus, and it gave me an olive green that I was pretty excited about.
Oooh, did you get a picture of the dog’s nose?
I did! It’s in my blog post today: http://lilfishstudios.blogspot.com/2011/10/dyeing-with-dogs-nose-fungus.html
I didn’t get a great photo of the finished wool, but it is an olive green up close.