The activity in my dyepots has slowed down lately, as my deck workspace is open to the afternoon sun, and my Nordic blood doesn’t take kindly to intense summer (well, almost-summer) heat. So I’m concentrating my efforts on combining mushroom colours, which always seem to go well together no matter which ones I choose.

I ran these colours through my drumcarder in lengthwise stripes: the yellow and bright gold (not all that visible, but it’s there) are from Dyer’s Polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii), as is the forest green (resulting from an iron mordant). The blue is from a successful Hydnellum aurantiacum dyepot, while the peach colour resulted from overdyeing a not-so-vibrant Phaeolus exhaust with the exhaust from a Lobster (Hypomyces lactifluorum) dyepot.

I won’t get to the spinning for a few weeks—I’m off to Toronto in early June to teach a one-day workshop at the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op, where I’m looking forward to comparing mushroom notes with students from that part of Canada.