Introduction


The aim of this blog will be later on to show around the endless possibilities hidden in the kingdom of fungi, let it be traditional applications like cultivation of gourmet or medicinal mushroom, or more unusual ones, like using mushrooms for their coloring or fibre properties, etc.

Right now I merely story about my home made attempts and experiments in the fields of cultivation, dyeing, ink, paper, decoration and packaging making, etc :)

--update: contact: gombakezerarca@gmail.com

Monday, March 12, 2012

Dyeing with dried Boletus edulis

This is one of the final results of the dyeing fever that took on me two weekends before.
I took dried Boletus edulis and tested several methods on half skeins of Regina Classic 002 wool after scouring and soaking for overnight. All skeins were dyed in the same dyebath in a consecutive manner.

I really love their welcoming warm, shiny colors. I am bringing it tomorrow to my workplace where a collegue will hopefully be willing to knit a nice hat out of them ( I cant knit :( ).
update: a hat is ready :)!

For the mordanting I used standard alum and a home made iron/copper mordant bath: I placed some 8-10 pieces of eurocents ranging from 1 till 20 plus 4-5 yellowish screws, and placed yarns into it for cold soaking for overnight. It took a while until the cover dissolved from the screws and the first yarns with the overnight cold mordanting method were more copper mordanted, while the ones I simmered thereafter were more affected by the iron screws, and acted more iron-mordanted.




From left to right:

  • 1.st bath: unmordanted: warm golden yellow.

  • 1.st afterbath: cold mordanted with alum for overnight. In the photo is not apparent but this is a stronger and brighter color as the unmordanted version: strong warm golden yellow.

  • 2nd afterbath: I poured some 2-3 tablespoon of ammonia (it is a lot compared to the dye pot which is 2-3 liters, I manage to boost pH to 10 normally with 1-2 teespoons for same volume of liquid from pH 6-7) and placed iron/copper cold mordanted wool in it. It is grey.

  • 3rd afterbath: I placed iron/copper simmered (30-60min) wool in it. It turned out be a warm greyish-brown. I think either the ammonia was mostly soaked up by the previous yarn or my iron/copper dyepot slowly turned into the direction of iron as the screws started to release their iron content, or there is a difference in cold and hot mordanting in this way - or a combination of any of these three :).


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