Back in October, when more and more dye mushrooms were coming home with me and the dyepots never cooled down, I’d finished with a good batch of Dyer’s Polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) but didn’t have time to do the exhausts, so I stuck the pot outside on my mudroom steps, with all the chunks of mushrooms going back into the dyebath.

At the same time, I found myself wondering what to do with a silk blouse that had a stain on the front. Aha! I thought. Let’s see if it can pick up any colour, and if the colour’s uneven and blotchy, so much the better.

It was a good six weeks before I got back to that dyepot, and even though parts of the blouse had been sitting right on the mushrooms all that time, the colour turned out to be quite even; too even, in fact – the stain still shows! (In the picture is a scarf from the original dyebath – I’ve embellished it with some mushroom beads.)

This is worth experimenting with next year, when I end up with more Phaeolus than my dyepots can accommodate. In the meantime, I still have to come up with some way of hiding that stain!

These skeins show the difference between premordanting and being treated to a mordant afterbath. All were dyed with dyer’s polypore, Phaeolus schweinitzii.

The two on the left were treated with iron; the darker one was premordanted, while the lighter one sat in an iron afterbath for about thirty minutes.

The brown skeins were treated with copper; again, the darker one on the left was mordanted before dyeing, while the lighter one was immersed in a copper afterbath.

Care must be taken not to use too strong a mordant solution, as I understand it can damage the fibres over time.

I premordanted the skeins by weighing the fibre and using about 7% of that weight when measuring out the mordant, plus an equal amount of cream of tartar. The afterbaths were made with a quarter teaspoon of mordant dissolved in three cups of boiling water. I’m keeping the solutions in labelled jars, should I want to use them as afterbaths again.

It’s late in the season to be finding young Phaeolus, so imagine my delighted surprise when I found four young clusters last week, all within some 200 yards of each other, and all coming up from underground fir roots (as opposed to growing on the tree trunk itself).

Now look at the colours (unretouched) that came from these four little clusters! These were from four exhausts, starting with the skeins/roving at top left (wool premordanted with copper and iron gave the brown and green skeins) and going around clockwise. The roving from the second dyebath (top right) was actually brighter than the first – I had this experience last year, too.

Not pictured are two skeins that I treated with copper and iron afterbaths.  I’ll post pictures of those soon, but right now I’m flying out the door for what will probably be the last organized foray of the Sunshine Coast SHROOM (Society for the Hunting, Recognition and Observation of Mushrooms).

I’m starting to find young dyer’s polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) in the forest, so they’re giving me some very rich golds, made even richer by the afternoon light.

I made another dyepot using grey fleece, Corriedale roving and a handful of Tencel. The colour didn’t turn out to be quite so vibrant, but rich nonetheless.

Last year I dyed mostly commercial yarn because I was more interested in seeing the wide range of colours I could get. This year I plan to dye more unspun fibre so I can play with them at the spinning wheel. Now it’s out for a foray in another part of the forest, a friend, my dog, and me.