Category Archives: Mushroom dyeing

Results of dyeing fibre with mushrooms I’ve found in the surrounding rainforest

Mushroom dyeing, Tapinella atrotomentosa (Velvet Pax)

Tapinella atrotomentosa (Velvet pax)

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Velvet pax

Now I know it’s going to be a great mushroom season—I joined a friend this afternoon for a hike to Ambrose Lake, and right beside the trail we found a stump just overloaded with Velvet pax. (Note the fuzzy brown stems befitting its name. This mushroom is very easy to identify—it grows on old, mossy fir stumps or on the sides of mossy logs.) Unfortunately, my camera announced that its battery was gone, so I had to wait until I got home to take this picture.

The dried mushrooms on the right are from an earlier hike in our own back forest; the fresh ones on the left are from today’s hike. I counted twelve specimens, all from the same tree!

I’ll dry all the Velvet pax I find until the season is finished. This should be a marvellous dyepot!

Mushroom dyeing, Phaeolus schweinitzii (Dyer's polypore)

Phaeolus vs. Pycnoporellus

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Pycnoporellus fulgens, aged

Alas, the mushroom I got so excited about last month wasn’t an early Phaeolus—I should have known—but it’s easy to see how they can be confused. Here on the left you can see that it was a little Pycnoporellus fulgens, now dried into a deep orange. I pick them at this stage and let them dry further until I have enough for a dyebath.

Phaeolus schweinitzii, young

But I was consoled by finding my first Phaeolus of the year on July 30, just a few yards down the trail (right next to a big pile of bear poo). I picked this one, too, to show visiting family what brilliant colour the young ones give—my next post will show the results.

Mr. Bear has been through here
Mushroom dyeing, Phaeolus schweinitzii (Dyer's polypore)

Possibly a Phaeolus?

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Phaeolus button?

Last week I spotted a bit of yellow something growing on a small—very small—stump of a Douglas fir. I had to go back to the spot today to check it out. I was keeping my fingers crossed that it might be a Phaeolus schweinitzii. My hopes were buoyed up when I saw how much it’s grown and changed since I first saw it.

I do believe this is a young dyer’s polypore. I’ve never seen one appear this early in the year, but we’ve had an exceptionally cool, wet spring (which adds to my firm belief that this is going to be a fabulous mushroom year!). Nor have I ever seen one on such a small stump—I usually find them on the massive, moss-covered stumps left over from the logging that was done here a hundred years ago. So I could be wrong . . . updates to follow as this little fungus grows.

Mushroom dyeing

Deanna’s Forest Floor Blanket

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Forest Floor Blanket

My dear friend and wonderful weaver, Deanna Pilling, unveiled her Forest Floor plaid at today’s Guild meeting (Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers).  The narrow pink and orange stripes are of yarn I dyed with mushrooms; the lighter middle stripe came from blackberry leaves and berries and was dyed by another weaver.

Deanna spent a lot of time deciding on the rest of the colours that make up this plaid; together they represent our rainforest with the rich hues of cedar, arbutus and soft green moss.

Lovely!

Mushroom dyeing

Love these Hydnellum greens

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Hydnellum textured yarn

This is such a soft, rich green. I found a good number of Hydnellum aurantiacum in the fall, enough for quite a large dyepot. I put a succession of rovings through three exhausts, then spun them into textured yarns, using the various shades of the same colour.

I’d read that shifting the pH to the alkaline side on this one can sometimes result in a blue, but I had no such luck. In fact, even at pH 11, I noticed little difference in the colours.

I have plans for this skein, involving a secret gift exchange among members of my spinners’ and weavers’ guild, but that’s all I’m going to say for now.

Hydnellum aurantiacum
Hypholoma fasciculare (Sulfur tufts), Mushroom dyeing

Spinning something yellow

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Sulfur tuft roving

In the world of natural dyeing, pale yellow is almost something to yawn at – it’s so easy to get with any number of grasses, leaves and weeds. However, the sulfur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare, formerly Naematoloma fasciculare) is one of the first dye mushrooms to appear in the fall, usually in early September, so I love to get a dyepot of its good, fresh colour going as a start to the dyeing season. I’ve tried letting the mushrooms dry and also leaving a fresh dyepot to sit for a week or two, and in both cases, the colour became more drab and less exciting.

Another reason I love this little mushroom is because it’s the one Miriam Rice threw into a dyepot some forty years ago, merely out of curiosity if it would give any colour (she’d been experimenting with other natural dyes, but never with mushrooms). Fortunately for us, she’d picked a cluster of sulfur tufts, one of the few mushrooms that does give a good colour. Had it been one of the many fungi that give a nice mushroom brown, I, and many others, probably wouldn’t be dyeing with mushrooms today!

This is some sulfur tuft roving I dyed last fall, and this ply will be the wrapping for a spiral or boucle yarn.

Sulfur tufts
Dermocybes, Mushroom dyeing

The finished yarn

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Merino on the bobbin

These colours came from varieties of Cortinarius semisanguineus, mushrooms that look like LBMs (little brown mushrooms) from above, but whose brilliant red, orange and gold gills attest to the pigments they contain. After saving two years’ worth of  dye experiments, it was time to spin them up. I’d used two kinds of wool – Merino and Corriedale – and separated them out, easily done by feel. I spun the Merino first, shown here on the bobbin, then spun the Corriedale on another bobbin. Colours always look brighter in unspun fibre; spinning and plying soften them somewhat.

I plied the two bobbins together into a textured yarn, enough for two skeins. With some Merino left on the bobbin, I Navajo-plied it to get a three-ply yarn with distinct colour breaks.

The last of this year’s dermocybes are simmering now in my slow cooker, and I’m dyeing silk with them. I’m saving the Cortinarius sanguineus to the end, as the colour is sure to be spectacular, although on the silk it won’t be as brilliant as if I were dyeing wool.

Dermocybe yarn
Dermocybes, Mushroom dyeing

What I’m spinning now

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Two years’ worth of rovings

It’s time I started doing something about my stash – well, some if it, anyway – so I gathered up all the bits and pieces of roving that went through the dermocybe dyepots over the last two years.

I found I had two kinds of wool: soft, silky Merino (the pile on the left) and coarser Corriedale (right). The Merino, which felts more easily anyway, has a lot of little slubs throughout – if I dye with it again, I’ll have to be more careful not to move it around too much when it’s in the hot dyebath.

I hand-carded the wool, to open up the fibres and line them up for spinning.

My plan is to spin one bobbin of Merino and one of Corriedale, then ply them together, thus getting the best of both wools. I’ll put the colours together at random, so when the yarn is finished, it should be an interesting blend courtesy of the little Cortinarius that grow in the woods around us.