Dyeing with Mushrooms

This past week I discovered the art of dyeing wool using mushrooms. I'm waiting to get my hands on some books that detail the process and provide information on which mushrooms to use. In the meantime I've decided to "dye"-ve right in and attempt to dye yarn with foraged mushrooms.

As you can see, winter is in full force here in Southern Ontario. This past week we've seen snow and temperatures way below normal. So for now my mushroom foraging options are limited. This is not the ideal time to harvest mushrooms, so I'm not expecting my results to be very impressive or successful. 

We finally had a nice day and took the dogs out for a jolly romp in the fields behind our apartment building. There are a few fields that have been used for agriculture. There is a fair amount of forested land between the fields and some small streams. The treed areas are pretty thick and hard to get through and dominated by hardwoods. There aren't many large or old trees. There is a fair amount of woody and herbaceous undergrowth in the summer.

I saw a number of polypores in the fall, but nothing I could harvest to eat. Truthfully when we went out today I was hoping to find some birches and look for Chaga. However, Southern Ontario experienced a huge decline in birch a number of years ago, and so they are a little on the rare or uncommon side. Nevertheless I will continue to look for birches and Chaga.

We did stumble upon a small hardwood covered in bracket fungi today. I was thrilled - polypores are commonly used to dye wool. So we harvested some, not a lot, in total we only took about 66 grams.

 

Since it is winter these guys were looking pretty rough. Doing an identification was tough, but I believe I narrowed it down to Ganoderma applanatum, otherwise known as the Artist's conk. From here forward I will refer to it is a G. applanatum.

We headed home, and once back at the apartment I placed the collected fungus on some paper towel to dry out while I did my identification. After I was confident and did some double-checking online I decided it was time to start making dye.

I like to keep busy with a lot of hobbies. One of my hobbies is foraging and learning about and spending time in the great outdoors. One of my other favourite hobbies is knitting. I find knitting relaxing, and I love creating beautiful pieces of art that are also practical. I had some bulky white 100% wool lying around from a previous project so I decided to use that for this experiment.

The Process of Dyeing Wool with G. applanatum

As I mentioned before we collected about 66 grams of G. applanatum. After it thawed out I cut it into rough chunks. The fungus smelled very mushroom-y but has a cork-like or woody texture. It is very tough.

I boiled about 2.25 cups of tap water in a small sauce pan. Once the water was boiling I added the mushroom chunks. I reduced the temperature to a simmer.

Immediately the water started to colour. After a few minutes the water was a definite orange-yellow tea colour. As time went on the dye water got darker. I simmered the mushrooms for one hour.

After an hour the dye water was a yellow-orange-tea colour. The dye water smelled like woody, astringent mushrooms. Not altogether unpleasant.

I added about 22 grams of white, 100% wool. I left the mushrooms in as well. Again, I brought the mixture to a "soft" boil and reduced the temperature so it could simmer.

Once the white yarn was in the dye bath the colour of the water became more apparent. The wool gave the dye bath a vague "wet dog" smell. I gently stirred while the mix simmered for about an hour; I had to be careful with my stirring as I noticed near the beginning that my vigorous mixing was going to make the yarn felt or fall apart. After the yarn/mushrooms simmered for an hour I removed from heat and placed elsewhere to cool. At this point I made dinner, so I let the yarn sit in the dye bath for about another hour. It was at room temperature when I started the next step.

You can see that some of the water has been boiled off at this point. 

The yarn has a golden hue to it. I removed the yarn from the dye bath and proceeded to gently rinse it under warm water in my (clean) kitchen sink. A number of tiny mushroom particles were embedded in the yarn which I gently removed.

After the rinse I made a little bath for the yarn using a tiny amount of dish soap (I get pretty gentle, "environmentally-friendly" dish soap from Costco). I gently washed it in the bath and got rid of the last bit of mushroom particles. Next came a second rinse to get all the soapy water out. I drained the water out of yarn and voila!

This picture was taken under very warm lighting so the colour is a little darker than it actually is. So I placed the white, un-dyed yarn alongside and you can notice the significant colour difference.

The Results

Now the yarn is hanging to dry, shouldn't take long. This is pretty true to the actual colour of the yarn; it is a nice, light gold or butter colour. I love it. It turned out MUCH better than I had originally anticipated. When I examined the yarn fibres up close I could notice a slight natural variation in the colour, I really like when this happens in yarns and tend to buy coloured yarn with a very minor amount of natural colour variation.

I drained the mushroom mix at the end and tossed what was left. The colour in the dye bath was pretty diminished after this so I figured there was no point in trying to get a second bath out.

I'm also hooked on this. I'm really excited to spend the next little while collecting more G. applanatum and trying different methods of dyeing yarn with it. And in the spring/summer/fall I will get to experience dyeing with all new mushrooms and fungus!