Mordant Monday: Foraging Instead

Today I was supposed to write about mordanting, but I had a foraging date to scout out potential sites for our upcoming workshop with Julie Beeler, so I headed out this morning to get a sense of what we might discover during our workshop. I am a mushroom foraging novice, and will stare for a long time at the forest floor and see absolutely nothing. I simply don’t have the eyes yet to distinguish between a brown leaf and a bolete. But to my surprise, there were some mushrooms that give color that very happily announced their presence right in front of me! These little beauties are called Sulfur Tufts, or Hypholoma fasciculare. They are non-edible and when used fresh to dye wool or silk, provide a light lemony yellow shade. Apparently, they will also fluoresce when viewed under a UV light.

I will report back on how we dyed with these, especially if we change a mordant variable or shift the dye bath with a pH modifier such as soda ash or cream of tartar. I will be able to work mordanting into this post somehow!