My dyeing buddy (and IFFS fellow traveller, except we missed out on the Canary Islands last year), Muriel, has developed a fool-proof method for obtaining purple from orange Ramaria, so I gave it a try with a double handful of the orange coral that I found a couple of days ago.

The mushroom weighed in at 150 grams, but it was still quite wet, so I used just 50 grams of wool yarn. First I put the mushroom in a large jar and just covered it with water, then covered it loosely with a piece of foil; then the iron-mordanted fibre went into another jar of plain water. Both jars went into my largest soup pot, with a cake-cooling rack underneath (I could have also used a folded tea towel to keep the jar from direct contact with the bottom of the pot). Then I added water to the pot until it reached the level of the jars’ contents.

I brought the water in the pot up to a slow simmer, then watched the temperature of the water in the jars. When that reached 90°C (about 195° F), I took the yarn out of its jar and put it in the now-purplish dyebath. (The mushrooms can be strained off at this point, but I kept them in the jar because I like a mottled effect.) I kept that jar at 90°C/195° for an hour, then turned everything off, to let it cool overnight.

Next time I’ll use a higher coral:fibre ratio, as this was paler than I hoped for, and I’ll move the fibre around more once it goes into the dyebath. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with the result.

Incidentally, I have occasionally obtained a pale purple with white coral, but the results are less consistent than when dyeing with its orange counterpart.