Sarcodon Mushroom

Grey blue and greens from Sarcodon mushrooms!

I'm so happy with the results. I collected some mushrooms and made sure to do a bit of identification and yes! I was correct. I had a good handful of them but was sat that I had missed a few rotten ones. After looking on this lovely woman's blog, I ran back and picked all the rotted ones I could find. From what I have read, the rotted (or naturally fermented ones) have more blue to them. The other non typical way of getting this color - you have to boil the mushrooms with the yarn in the pot. It's the heat that transfers the color? PH was around 7. In turn you then have to have some wool yarn that can handle being boiled. These samples are gala yarn from dharma trading and was mordanted with alum and cream of tartar. The dye bath is a muddy red color and I had the yarn in the pot about 15 minutes? Smooshing it while boiling with the mushrooms to get it really mixed in.

From left to right - all with alum and cream of tartar mordant.

First dip 15 minutes boiled.  Second dip added a pinch of washing soda 20 min boiled.  third dip boiled 15 min. Last dip I added a bit of iron (not much at all) boiled for 15 min.

I was loosing the blue's by the 4th dip but surprised of how much color was left in the pot.  I wonder how blue it would have been if I added washing soda from the start.  Rinsing it took some of the red tones away and letting the blues shine through.