Mushroom dyes 
Last year I dyed a small sample of wool with the Cortinareus collected from the Sitka Spruce growing near the flagpole at SJ. I called that fungus. C. semisanguinarius. This year I recollected the red gilled Cort that was growing in the same spot and noticed that the cap seemed alot redder than semisanguinarius is supposed to be and decided that it must be C. phoeniceus var. occidentalis. They both have yellowish stems, red gills, turn black with KOH and have similar (I assume) ecology. The most significant differences seem to be the cap color and occasionally the stem color. The stem color seems to be more variable in semisanguinarius.
It would be nice to have something other than cap color to go on. The ones here aren't as red when wet as some of the photos would suggest, but when dry the caps did look alot redder.
I premordanted the silk scarf and some wool roving in Alum/cream of tartar. The scale I have at home is kind of a joke, so I guessed at the amount of alum. Basically less than a teaspoon for the 2 oz of material. While that simmered, I seperated the mushrooms that had been drying for the last few days. The two types (I had a second rusty orange Cortinarius drying as well) were not so easy to seperate when dry. The difference in the cap color fades with prolonged drying.
Put roughly one ounce of C. phoeniceus var occidentalis in a gallon jar and filled it with warm water. The water turned a pretty deep red in less than 5 minutes. I put the 10 or so of the other Cortinarius in quart jar and let them soak as well. The liquid was more of an orange color.
Rinsed the mordanted silk and wool before adding it to the jars, (the silk in the phoeniceus and the wool in the other). Simmered for 1 hour and let cool in the liquid for several hours. Rinsed both in warm water and let dry.
The scarf is a nice shade of orange red (deep orange red, #36 using the color chips) although it looks more like blood with the flash. The wool is what I would call a soft tangerine sort of orange (bright orange, #54). The orange wool is pretty similar to the color achieved last year. In fact it matches the same color chip. I don't know if I left a few of the phoeniceus in the mix or if in fact the two mushrooms dye wool the same color. Hopefully there are some of each left growing so I can try again.
It was a little slower of a mushroom week, but I did find another Suillus the other day along the Gavan trail. There were 3 or 4 of them under a Pinus contorta just off the board wal
k not too far past the last fennish muskeg.
k not too far past the last fennish muskeg. Suillus umbonatus: it was growing in kind of a tight cluster near a shore pine so I'm assuming that it is associated with it, although there are Western Hemlock in the area as well.
Cap is viscid, somewhat irregular in shape, the ones I picked were 1. 5 , 2 and 3 inches in diameter. The color was somewhere between light and medium olive brown.
The pores are large and yellow (soft yellow, #84 from the yellow olive brown page). The stem was slender, 1, 1. 5 and 1.75 inches tall were what I measured. No glandular dots that I could see. There was an annulus, it looked like a brown, somewhat transparent slug wrapped around the upper stem. The annulus dried flat and rootbeer brown colored.
I didn't taste this one. No staining reactions. The cap flesh was light gray and the stem flesh a bit yellower than that of the cap.
S. umbonatus seems to be the best fit.
Also found this relatively inconspicous Inocybe in the second growth off the Gavan trail. I'm not taking this genus any further at this point as there is only so much I can take on at one time. Thought I'd at least pay it my respects by acknowledging its existance.
I'm pretty certain that it is an Inocybe. The spore color is a bit on the dull side and the cap shape looks right. I've been struggling a bit with the subtleties of color lately, so I can only hope that I'm making the right call.
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