All posts by Shroomworks

In 2003, my dearest and I decided to move to and build in an area surrounded by rainforest on BC's Sunshine Coast. So I thought it would be wise to learn about mushrooms. Little did I know that this new interest, combined with my joining the local spinners' and weavers' guild, would lead to a new passion: dyeing fibre with mushrooms. I was lucky enough to attend the 13th International Fungi & Fibre Symposium in Mendocino, California, in 2008, and from the good people there, I learned a great deal and was inspired to come home and learn even more. The story has just begun . . .
Hydnellum aurantiacum, Mushroom dyeing

Yes to these dyepots!

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While I was expecting more of a green from my first dyepot of the season using Hydnellum aurantiacum, I won’t say no to these colours.

The blue is what I would expect from Sarcodon fuscoindicus (Violet Hedgehog), and I wonder if this one will also fade to a paler green over time, as the coveted blue from the Hedgehog can be expected to do (and as the exhaust bath, the lower sample, seems to have already done).

With this dyebath I cooked the mushrooms at a very high pH. I guessed at it this time because I’m running short of pH strips, I can’t find any locally (and I’ve asked at every pharmacy), and the workers at Canada Post are on strike at the moment, so the ones I ordered are sitting in a warehouse somewhere. That means I must use what I have sparingly.

All of that to say I tossed a capful of ammonia into the dyepot, gave it the sniff test and decided I must have added quite enough, and proceeded to cook a goodly number of mushrooms. I gave it a good simmer, let it cool overnight, added half a capful of ammonia, then retrieved one of my precious pH strips. Ah, with age and experience a certain amount of acquired knowledge is to be expected: the pH measured at a perfect 10!

Feeling confident, and with more H. aurantiacum on hand than I’ve enjoyed in many years, I decided to repeat the same process, this time with an alum-mordanted skein of handspun wool.

It emerged a striking grey, if grey can be described as striking, with some subtle green undernotes. The exhaust resulted in a green that has grown on me. I think it has some possibilities.

And this is why mushroom dyeing never loses its appeal: the dyepots can still deliver surprises.

Mushroom dyeing

Going Green

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This has been a most abundant season for the dyers (with the exception of the dermocybes, strangely enough, as only a few of those have shown up so far). So I’ve decided to focus on greens this year, specifically those that I can expect from these lovelies:

Hydnellum aurantiacum, which should give me a blue-green, made darker with an iron mordant:

Tapinella atrotomentosa, a darker green, also with iron; and

Boletopsis leucomelaena (which I have also referred to as Boletopsis grisea in earlier posts). For this green I’ll use alum-mordanted fibre.

I’ll soon have time to get the dyepots fired up, then I expect to spend the winter evenings ahead spinning the wool into yarns of varying greens.

You may have noticed that one green is missing from this list, the dark green from Phaeolus schweinitzii, Dyer’s Polypore. This old favourite is consistent with its rich golds and greens (with iron mordant), and I hesitate to confess this here: probably because I don’t wear those gold-toned colours easily (and therefore have grown tired of spinning them), I’m choosing not to process any Phaeolus dyepots this year.

I know, that smacks of sacrilege, but these next few months are going to be all about surrounding myself with the colours I like to play with.

Mushroom dyeing

That’s What I Call Purple!

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Who but another mushroom dyer would get excited about what appears to be bits of slime interwoven with purple intestines? Just look at that colour! I had to grab a shot of this straight out of the dyepot—there will be time later to pick the bits out, dry the wool, and card it for spinning—the first purple of the season deserves to be documented here and now.

Ramaria is appearing in abundance this year, and as I learned from previous experience, they have to be used fresh. Given that I’ve come home with bags full of these gifts from the forest each time I go foraging, and given that my studio time is somewhat limited this month, I’ve chosen to process these dyepots in the kitchen (a practice I usually discourage, but I’m using dedicated pots and utensils and turning on the range hood fan).

I also decided to put the wool straight in with the the mushrooms, which is giving an interesting variegated effect, as the wool that’s in direct contact with them is much darker.

Being careful not to let the dyebath get too hot, I bring the temperature up slowly; the purple starts to appear at around 48°C (120°F). I bring it up to 70°C (160°F), then turn the heat off. I leave the dyepot on the burner and let it cool for a few hours or overnight, then repeat the process twice more. I don’t know if these repetitions are necessary, but I like to think the colour will have a better chance to set by doing that.

Is it any wonder purple has always been a royal colour?

Mushroom dyeing

We’re back!

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The mushrooms are back, the collecting bag is coming home full after each foray, and soon my dyepots will be going again! After a couple of years of drought that sent the mushrooms into hiding, it’s wonderful to see them showing their faces again.

Newly reprinted copies of Magic in the Dyepot have arrived, too. So if you’ve been thinking of starting to dye with fungi, or if you would like to add another reference to your library, consider ordering a copy.

This link will take you to the order page.

Mushroom dyeing

Welcome back, little beauties!

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Hydnellum peckii, post-strawberries-and-cream stage

The fear has ended: the mushrooms are coming back! Two years of frightening summer drought resulted in very few mushrooms, but now, with rains throughout the summer and abundant rainfall these past few weeks, the forest floor is again sending up so many mushrooms, so many different types, that I’m feeling a mushroom energy I thought was lost.

On a foray this week I found a small gathering of Hydnellum. At first I thought they were H. aurantiacum, as I would expect to find more of these around, but then I noticed the reddish tinge on the cap. These had to be H. peckii, the lovely mushrooms that start out white with beads of red liquid on their surfaces. Hence the name Strawberries and Cream.

Sure enough, when I sliced the stem vertically, the inside of the stem was dark brown, not the orange of H. aurantiacum (Latin for orange-coloured).

It’s early days for these little toothed fungi, but I’m encouraged to see these at least, after a couple of seasons of very few (or none at all) Hydnellum. More to report in the next few weeks.

Mushroom dyeing

The hiatus is over

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This was just a part of the day’s harvest.

Tapinella atrotomentosa: They’re giants this year!

You may have noticed that I’ve written very few posts over the last couple of years, mostly because there’s been little for me to write about. The last two summers in this part of the world were scarily dry, which seems strange considering that I live in a temperate rainforest.

In the nine months of the year when rain is a constant part of our lives (I live on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada) it’s obvious that we’re surrounded by rainforest: towering cedars, hemlock, and Douglas fir, glens crowded with sword ferns and salal, brilliant green mosses, and lichens draping themselves over branches or covering the soil surface everywhere you look.

But all it takes is a few summer weeks of no rain and unrelenting sunshine, and everything starts to feel crispy. Give it a few more weeks and the mosses become crunchy underfoot. The little brooks dry up, larger streams become smaller, and the small ponds become mud holes. The mushrooms know they’re not going to like such conditions, and so they stay put and go into retreat. It’s difficult not seeing these little friends of the forest.

Now it looks as if 2024 might go down as another fantastic, over-the-top mushroom season! We’ve had welcome rain throughout the summer, and already the August mushrooms have been popping out in such abundance that sometimes I wonder if I’m not being transported to that amazing year of twenty-aught-twelve, when I couldn’t keep up with the harvest of dye mushrooms.

This abundance has led to a renewed excitement about firing up the dyepots again. And it has also led to another development: Magic in the Dyepot, which has been out of print for too long, will soon be available again! Just in time for mushroom season in western/northern North America and for much of Europe. So if you were disappointed about missing out on a copy, stay tuned . . . it shouldn’t be much longer.

Mushroom dyeing

Changes are in the works

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Gentle readers:

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted about my dyepot adventures, primarily because it’s been far too long since our area (the temperate rainforest of coastal British Columbia) has had a good mushroom season.

While my surroundings are still very much a rainforest, at least through the winter and spring, summers have become consistently hotter and drier over recent years. Last year the autumn rains didn’t happen until late October, and the dye mushrooms were scarce, with a few species not appearing at all, when I used to find them in abundance.

The result of this has been a shift in my own creative work; for the last two years I have spent most of my studio upcycling thrifted garments or making clothes from thrifted fabrics.

In the meantime, I have genuinely enjoyed sharing my dyepot discoveries with you, and I hope I have inspired some of your own joyful discoveries.

Hydnellum aurantiacum, Mushroom dyeing

A Happy Accident

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And that’s how we wish all our accidents to be, right?

The colours that resulted on this wool roving were not at all what I expected, and at first inexplicable. After all, this came out of a Hydnellum aurantiacum dyepot, a mushroom I usually rely on to give a pleasant bluish green. And I had done everything right: a generous 2:1 ratio of mushrooms to fibre (1:1 will usually suffice, but this year I can afford to be generous), cooked at pH 10 (raised with the addition of ammonia) from which the sample strands emerged beautifully green, left to cool overnight, strained, then wool added, temperature brought up slowly to 160 degrees F, then cooled overnight with the wool still in the dyebath.

Mystified, I went through the mental dyeing process again, until the Aha moment struck. I like to contain the dye mushrooms in a mesh bag, my favourite being a fine nylon lingerie bag because the nylon doesn’t pick up the colour. Except . . .

In May of this year, I finally screwed up the courage to use the small bag of Cortinarius sanguineus I had obtained at the 2018 Fungi & Fibre Symposium in Norway. These are such precious little guys, and I was saving them until I finished spinning some local grey wool into yarn. I popped the lovely dermocybes into my handy nylon bag, then into the pot. I was surprised at the orange tones from the first and subsequent dyebaths, having expected a deep red in both the grey yarn and the white roving.

But I accepted this as one of the quirks of the trade, spun up the rest of the wool and made a little cape for my granddaughter, whose colouring can handle these orangey shades. I rinsed the bag (or so I thought) and put it away until fall and the next mushroom dyeing season.

The Hydnellum were everywhere this year, and were my first dyepot of the season. Without thinking, I popped the mushrooms into the yellow bag . . . well, you know the story from there. The roving that was in contact with the nylon must have picked up its colour, while the part that wasn’t kept the green I was expecting. And while it’s not what I would have chosen, it should make for an interesting variegated yarn when I do spin it up, and I’m thinking it will ply nicely with some Phaeolus green wool that I’ve been wondering what do do with.

And that’s why I never tire of dyeing with fungi.

Mushroom dyeing, Tapinella atrotomentosa (Velvet Pax)

Temperamental Tapinella

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Tapinella atrotomentosa

We were blessed this spring and summer with a lot of rain (not everyone in this community felt blessed, thus labelling themselves non-mushroomers), which led to an abundance of Tapinella atrotomentosa in late July. Embarking on a quest for a sturdy purple, I discovered that this beautiful velvet-footed mushroom may or may not choose to release the royal colour so many of us are fond of.

Tapinella mauve, pH3

I must confess I had forgotten the advice of Miriam Rice (a pioneer of mushroom dyeing and ever my mentor) to throw a splash of vinegar into the Tapinella dyepot to lower the pH. So this time I did, remembering to use unmordanted wool, with a most pleasing result. Because I was using fresh mushrooms, I just eyeballed the amount of wool to use, erring on the side of caution to get a strong colour. It’s important when dyeing with Tapinella to watch the temperature carefully, bring the heat up slowly, and to pull the fibre out when you have the colour you want, usually between 140º and 150ºF. If you allow to reach higher temperatures, you run the risk of ending up with brown or grey.

The next sample started off purple, but I hung it out in the sun to dry, so the outer layer of the roving turned a light brown. This also happened when I hung a sample out to be rained on; from now on I’m letting these dry inside in the shade.

Disappointing Tapinella purple

Green with iron dyebath

Another disappointing dyebath gave only a dull grey, which I cooked again in an iron bath to get an acceptable green.

Tapinella purples and grey

Over several subsequent dye sessions I did get some lovely deep purples and a strong grey that can hold its own in the purple category (nothing wrong with a good neutral, right?)

My dyeing partner, Muriel, found similar inconsistencies with her Tapinella dyeing, so now we’re more than ready for some predictable results. We’re just waiting for the fall rains to bring the dyers out.

Hypomyces lactifluorum (Lobster), Lobster mushroom, Mushroom dyeing

Crazy lobster colour

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This was an unintended experiment with unintended—and happy!—results. I’m not yet finished with it, but since many mushroom dyers are finding and dyeing with Hypomyces lactifluroum (Lobster mushrooms) right now, I wanted to pass this along.

Lobster red

These brilliant reds are actually from an exhaust bath . . . really! Here’s how they came about:

In the spring of 2018 I gave a dye workshop on Vancouver Island. The previous two mushroom seasons had been very poor because of extremely dry summers, and I didn’t have a lot of dried mushrooms to play with, but still had a few lobster parings on hand. I set aside 25 grams of these for the workshop and, as usual, put them in an old nylon stocking for the dyebath.

The workshop got some good results, and when none of the participants wanted to take the spent lobster parings home with them (probably put off by the fishy aroma), I took them home myself. The first exhaust gave a pale orangey pink; the second exhaust a disappointing beige. I had heated these in a makeshift double boiler (the dyebath in a large glass jar that sat in a pot of boiling water), and I just left the disappointing parings where they were, to be dealt with later. This is a bad habit, I know, because so often those spent mushrooms can be most unpleasant to deal with later, but the jar got left, ignored, over the winter and into the spring (we’re now talking spring of 2019).

Lobster dyebath one year later

In my pre-dyeing-season cleanup, I rediscovered the jar, only to find that the liquid (in which the pared bits were still steeping), now much reduced through evaporation because I’d left it outside uncovered, had turned a brilliant deep red!

Into a small dyepot it went, with just enough water to cover a generous piece of wool roving.

The colour in the rovings in the image at the top of this post is uneven because I didn’t want to agitate the wool in such a small amount of liquid. The wool at the bottom of the basket is actually the fourth exhaust, and there’s more to go. The wool was mordanted with alum; no modifiers were used, although in the end I might dip them in a high-pH solution to shift to a more purply red.

So hang onto those Lobster parings, fellow dyers! You never know what might result.