It’s All About Color

All of these beautiful colors came from mushrooms. Students from all over the world gathered at 13th International Fungi & Fibre Symposium and exchanged samples of the yarn they dyed last week at the Mendocino Art Center, California. (Click on the highlighted text for more information about the Symposium.)

Beautiful silk scarves dyed with mushrooms were on display. These lovely ones were created by Julie Schleuder. Some of them looked like resist dyeing to me.

The pink is from Cortinarius Semisanguineus, the lavender from Hapalopilus Nidulans, the brown from Phaeolus Schweinitzii, and the gray from Hydnellum Peckii. (You will have to excuse my shaky spelling of these names, I am not a mycologist.)
This cute knitted hat was made by Marilyn Caddell from Scotland. The artist noted that the purple yarn was dyed with Hapalopilus Nidulans with alum mordant. Don’t you love the little mushrooms marching around the band?
There was a class busy making felted bowls from wool roving blended with mushroom dyed roving. The class was working very hard when I stopped by and the results were intriguing.
Here is a cute troll guarding some mushrooms.
The mushrooms were made by felting and so was the troll.

If you expected mushrooms to produce only browns, beiges, and earth tones, the displays showed the wide range of colors extracted from fungi. This striped weaving gives an idea of the range.

A beautiful afghan made with mushroom dyed yarn was presented to the founder of the mushrooms for color movement, Miriam C. Rice, at the banquet Friday night.
It was also a celebration of Miriam’s 90th birthday.

Miriam’s granddaughter, on the left, is a videographer. She covered the Symposium and interviewed participants.
Dorothy Beebee, illustrator extraordinaire, has been exploring mushroom dyes with Miriam since 1974. She illustrated Miriam’s newest book, Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™. The book was just published in December by Mushrooms for Color Press, Forestville, CA 95436. (Click on the highlighted text for purchase information.)
Once upon a time, long, long ago Miriam Rice dropped a skein of mordanted yarn into a cooking pot of mushrooms she was going to throw out. She pulled out the skein and saw it had turned an outstanding, bright yellow. She experimented with all sorts of mushrooms for a couple of years and found a new world of color.

Someone told Miriam about a little fiber art book publisher called Thresh Publications in Santa Rosa, CA. Miriam’s colorful yarns made their way to the little publisher and she was told to go home and write a book. She did.

Robert and I thought there might be some interest in this new branch of natural dyeing. We knew an illustrator, Dorothy Beebee, so we asked her to draw ONE mushroom for the cover of a little book called Let’s Try Mushrooms for Color. In 1974 that little book was published.