Mushroom Dyeing Results!

 The first part of this year's mushroom dyeing project is complete.  It is a complete success!  At least I am so happy about the results.

The quick story is that I put about 7 grams of wetted Lonk sheep fiber into the pot with the mushroom dye-bath and let it simmer for an hour then shut off the burner and let everything cool down overnight.  The gold-y orange color is beautiful.  Well, my husband doesn't like it but I do!

Since that worked so well I put four 7-8 gram pieces of Lonk fiber in a bowl with cold water with 10 percent alum dissolved in the water and let them soak 24 hours.  Some people say 24 hour, others say at least 4 days.  Well, I went with the 24 hours.

After rinsing the now pre-mordanted Lonk fiber, the fiber was put into the dye-bath and brought to a simmer where it sat for one hour.  Turned off and let cool down overnight.  This morning I pulled out the fiber and dried it off somewhat.  

This is the results:

The fiber on the left is the un-pre-mordanted-with-alum fiber; the one of the right is mordanted.  There is a difference.  The fiber with mordant is a brighter color.  I am so pleased!

So pleased that I went back out to the new fairy gardens on the lawn and picked a bag of white mushroom tops.  They are Agaricadeae mushrooms according to Picture This app. Since they are white I have no idea if they will do anything but I am going to put in a plain piece of fiber and a mordanted piece of fiber tomorrow, simmer one hour, then let cool.  I will let you know if we get different colors!

By the way...I believe the orange mushrooms are Suillacaeae.

We Have Fairy Gardens!

 We have had rain almost every day for about two weeks.  We needed it and are happy for it...though I do have to say that today I left the house when it was cloudy and by the time I got to my destination more than 30 minutes away I had been through two very scary deluges!  I do not enjoy driving or riding in the rain. AT ALL!

This morning when we woke up I took these pictures of what I have heard described as Fairy Gardens.  They really are beautiful.

These mushrooms came up in two days and are just outside our garage.  I do love them.  I intended to harvest them for solar dyeing wool fiber to see what color we could get. BUT the day got ahead of me.  Hopefully tomorrow.

As you can see, these came up by the birdfeeder.  There are also some plants...probably sunflowers...that are growing up where seeds were dropped.  I think we will let them grow a bit before cutting them. 

These mushrooms are a different variety of mushrooms.  Last year or the year before I did some mushroom dyeing with orange-y mushrooms and got a lovely yellow fiber. I hope I can repeat that.  I just have to find the directions again!

My hope is that the mushrooms will still be in good shape tomorrow when I have time to harvest them and turn them into dye.  I picked some last week and almost immediately they turned into a horrifying moldy mess.  I hope I can help the basket recuperate!

Since I am mentally into solar dyeing I am hoping someone has a lot of weedy goldenrod they would like someone to take away.  I would do it!  I really love the beautiful yellow goldenrod produces.  You should try it yourself!

First Attempt Marigold Dyeing Wool Yarn

 On Monday I saw a video about dyeing wool yarn with marigolds!  What a concept!  We had a ton of marigold blossoms on the deck in the plant tower...

Well, we DID have a ton of blossoms.  On Monday I was only able to harvest about 1/4 cup of blossoms.  I pinched off all the spent blooms and am hopeful that the plants will come through with another batch of blossoms soon.

So--dyeing with marigolds.  There are many videos.  This is what I did. I put the marigold blossoms in a one-quart Revere Ware saucepan that we received for a wedding gift fifty-one years ago. It is still almost pristine even with very frequent usage!  I brought the water to a strong simmer on the stove over low heat--though our low heat was way more than a simmer so I shut off the burner in short order and let the pot sit for an hour or so.

In the meantime I put my new-to-me stainless steel pot-now to be a dye pot only- from the thrift store on the stove and put in a  lot of water and 1 teaspoon of powdered alum that I found at the grocery store for about $3.00.  I added half a teaspoon of cream of tartar and stirred well.  Next I added a skein of previously spun yarn from Thetford Roving and submerged the yarn in the alum water.  I brought the pot up to simmer and watched it like a hawk for a few minutes then when I worried that it was too hot, I shut off the pot and let the wool soak in the hot mordant water for an hour or so.

When the mordanting stage was done (an hour), I took the yarn out of the pot, squeezed out the water then rinsed in fresh water.  At this point I strained the possibly-spent marigold blossoms out of the small pot then moved that water into the bigger pot and added the yarn.  There was not much water so I added enough to cover the yarn and brought the temperature up to a simmer again.  Yet again I could not really regulate that temperature so I turned off the heat, put the cover on and turned the oven on to 180 degrees F.  After placing the covered pot of marigold "tea", water, and yarn in the oven I set the timer for an hour then went about my business.  After an hour I shut of the stove and ascended to the "upper regions" where I picked up my test knitting and spent another hour knitting before crawling off to bed.

In the morning I pulled the pot out of the oven with guarded high hopes.  After all, there were only 1/4 cup blossoms and about 25 grams of yarn, if I recall correctly.

This is what I found:

This made me so happy!  The "control" yarn is on the bottom and the dyed yarn on top.  Yes, it did dye the yarn yellow.  No, it is not very yellow, but what could I expect with only 1/4 cup of blossoms.

In the last two days since I pulled the yarn out of the oven, I have watched many more marigold and other natural dyeing videos.  I am really souped up to try more soon.  I will be keeping my eyes out for marigold beds in case people want to share.

ALSO!!!  Lichen!  Lichen soaked in ammonia and water for several months makes a beautiful purple dye!  Amazingly, a few weeks ago we had a windstorm and a small broken branch showed up under out live oak tree on the front lawn. It is covered with lichen, though I don't know what variety.   I did not immediately pick it up....sometimes sloth turns out to be a good thing!  So I will bring that in and harvest the lichen.  I will also go for a walk around the neighborhood and see if anyone has any broken branches after Hurricane Debby finally lets go of us.  Still raining today and wind blowing.

So...I ordered several used books on dyeing with natural plants AND I also ordered an inexpensive hot plate to see if I can actually follow the rules more closely.  I am looking forward to much more colorful yarn spinning in the future, even though I don't mind at all spinning white yarn.  Plying white and a color makes me happy, too.