I have been having lots of fun experimenting with mushroom dyes the last few weeks, both at the annual fiber arts classes at SOMA camp, and at home.
The mushrooms that I have been dyeing with are Dermocybe spp. (pink to orange), Omphalotus olivascens (purple and green) and Gymnopilus spp. (yellow).
I finally learned how to get a reliable lavender with Omphalotus olivascens by adding a splash of vinegar to the dye bath. And with the same mushroom I got gorgeous greens by adding iron water to the dye bath. (By iron water I mean water from a jar that I keep filled with old rusty objects, water and vinegar for an iron rich liquid.) Several of the green yarns in the photo below were small skeins of a boring tan or light gray color that I over dyed, so I got quite a nice range of greens.
Mushroom dyes on wool: Dermocybe spp. (pink-orange), Omphalotus olivascens (purple, gray or green), Gymnopilus spp. (yellow)
Last fall I found some Pisolithus tinctorius and got great shades of gold and brown on wool and silk.
Pisolithus tinctorius on wool and silk for beautiful golds and browns
It has been a very dry winter here, so I’m not sure how mushroom hunting will be for the rest of the season, but yesterday some friends and I were lucky in finding a fair amount of Dermocybes, both the red variety and the gold variety. I decided to dry these for use later in the year, so I spread them out on some small window screens and have propped them over the heater vents. My house currently smells a bit like mushroom soup. Yum!
Dermocybes drying for future mushroom dye use. I have separated the stems and caps to get a wider variety of dye colors.
I am building up a nice stash of mushroom dyed yarns, so I look forward to some knitting projects soon. Some of the brighter colors will probably become accents in projects made with natural colored yarns.
My indigo crop was abundant this year, and I allowed the stems to flower at the beginning of fall. When the flower clusters started to turn brown, I cut off the stems and spread them on a cloth to dry indoors. Now I have a huge pile of stems, and have started to clean the seeds.
Dried Japanese indigo stems, ready for seed collection and cleaning.
Japanese indigo seeds
This year I am offering my seeds on the Fibershed Marketplace website. A percentage of each sale goes to support Fibershed in our ongoing educational programs.
Some advance news of a very exciting event we are planning: Fibershed founder and director Rebecca Burgess is in conversation with Rowland Ricketts about him making a trip to California in January to consult with her about building a traditional indigo composting floor, and we are organizing an evening lecture by Rowland that will be open to the public! More information as soon as plans are finalized.
Note added January 4, 2012: The workshop sold out immediately, but there will be an evening lecture by Rowland in Point Reyes Station on January 10th. For more information, visit the Fibershed Events page.
I am also very excited about a DVD I bought recently called Natural Dye Workshop with Michel Garcia, Colors of Provence Using Sustainable Methods. I learned some new methods for making indigo vats, and for using a clay resist paste to create interesting designs with indigo. The course also covers painting with mordants to achieve a variety of results with other plant dyes. Highly recommended!
I am pleased to announce that the Fibershed Marketplace is now open for business! We are a community of artisans and farmers collaborating to create beauty, function and healthy alternatives in the world of fibers and textiles. I first became involved with the Fibershed Project through taking a natural dye class with its founder, Rebecca Burgess. What started out as Rebecca’s personal commitment to wearing clothing sourced from fibers, natural dyes and artisans within 150 miles of her home, has evolved into a beautiful collaboration. Thank you, Rebecca, for being the catalyst for this creation.
These are the faces of those whose products are currently found in the Marketplace. Eventually I hope to add some plant and mushroom dyed yarns and handmade goods of my own, but for now I am just selling my Japanese indigo seeds there, along with seeds from other indigo gardens in the Bay Area.
My main involvement at this point is that I put together the new websites for Fibershed and the Fibershed Marketplace, and I am managing the daily operation of the Marketplace as well.
We are looking for other artisans in our fibershed (within 150 miles of San Geronimo, California) who would like to sell their local fibers, dyes or handmade goods made of local fibers and dyes, so please contact me if you are interested.
This summer and fall, much of my natural dye activity has been to grow or collect and dry my dye plants for future use. Dye plants in my garden this year that I am harvesting and drying are Japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorium), Dyer’s coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), Cota (Thelesperma megapotamicum), and Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris). I also have a pot of Madder (Rubia tinctorum), but it is less than two years old, so I will be waiting another year or two before I begin to harvest that.
A few stems of Cota harvested from the garden and ready to dry for future use
Cota has been used by the native people of the southwest for centuries, both as a dye plant and as a medicinal. I am drying mine in anticipation of receiving of a booklet of dye recipes and a skein of handspun Churro wool from a Navajo community that runs the Black Mesa Wool Buy each year. The dye ranges in hue from yellow to dark orange.
The Japanese indigo I am drying in anticipation of adding it to a much larger harvest of indigo that will be composted in the traditional Japanese way to make sukomo, which can be used to start an indigo vat. Visit the Ricketts Indigo website for a lovely photo essay on traditional Japanese indigo harvesting and processing.
Some of my Japanese indigo that has been cut and is drying in the sun, to be composted this fall into sukomo, for the traditional Japanese method of creating an indigo vat.
My small harvest of indigo will be added to the several hundred pound harvest from Rebecca Burgess‘s indigo fields in Marin County, California. Later this month Rebecca will be constructing a nedoko, a traditional Japanese composting shed with an earthen floor, and I plan to assist so that I can learn more about the process. More on that later.
A small portion of Rebecca's indigo being harvested by volunteers. The hills of West Marin are a wonderful place to garden.
After the indigo is dried, Rebecca and friends begin the tedious task of removing the leaves from the stems in preparation for the composting process.
Throughout the summer I have been gather flowers from my Dyer’s coreopsis and letting them dry, to be used later for a lively orange or red dye.
Dyer's coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), for a beautiful orange or red dye.
In the next few days I plan to harvest some of the large quantity of Mugwort in my garden, and dry it for future use. I did a test dye bath in May of this year, and it yielded a yellow-green. Now that the Mugwort is flowering, it will be interesting to see if it yields a different color.
Alum-mordanted wool dyed with Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) in the spring
The oak covered hills of my area are a great place to collect another wonderful dye material, oak galls. Gall formation is often triggered by tiny wasps the size of fruit flies that lay eggs on oak trees. The eggs hatch and the larva begins to chew, releasing a chemical that triggers the plant to produce a gall. Oak galls were used by native Californians as an eyewash and dye, and were also used for centuries in many countries to create ink.
I am always on the lookout for oak galls, as I walk in the oak woodlands of my native California.
As a dye source, oak galls can produce beautiful shades of tan and brown with no mordant or with an iron modifier, and gray and black with the addition of iron to the dyebath. I have been collecting rusty objects in a jar with water and vinegar, to create iron liquid that I can use in the dye bath or as a modifier. (Use 1 Tbsp. of vinegar for each cup of water.)
An iron modifier created by adding rusty objects and a splash of vinegar to a jar of water.
I’ll be sharing photos and notes as I experiment with all these fantastic dye materials over the next few months.
Lately I have been pretty busy with graphic design work, leaving little time to experiment with textiles and dyes. However, I have enjoyed a number of my recent graphic design projects, among them a project for nearby Spirit Rock Meditation Center, which includes both print materials and the website for a capital campaign called the Sangha of Thousands of Buddhas. Their goal is to raise the remaining funds needed for a community meditation hall and housing for teachers. Spirit Rock is located in a beautiful rural setting, and their expansion plans are very sensitive to the surrounding environment.
While I can’t really call myself a practicing Buddhist (since I am not fond of sitting meditation), I certainly feel aligned with the philosophy of Buddhism. And I am grateful to have a place like Spirit Rock in my community for the positive message it teaches. Here’s one of many meaningful quotes from one of Spirit Rock’s founders, Jack Kornfield:
“You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.”
My recent design for some of the campaign materials for Spirit Rock Meditation Center
