Polyozellus multiplex

Photo Credit: Franck Tuot (Courtesy of Forest for Dinner)

Blue? Black? Grey? What colour will blue chanterelle give today?

The fungi family Thelephoraceae contains other geni besides Polyozellus, including several other mushroom taxa which are ex cellent dyers including Boletopsis, Hydnellum and Sarcodon. Polyozellus is more commonly known as the blue chanterelle or black chanterelle in Alaska. It’s an edible mushroom found in spruce and fir forests here on the west coast. It has a very pleasant salty mushroomy smell in the dye pot which helps explain its popularity in fine dining. But today I simmered the crap out of it to try and get some good colours.

TLDR: 32 grams mushroom, 16 grams wool, simmered most of one day, premordanting with iron gave darker greys than premordanting with alum.

Step 1: Weigh everything

I started with 16 grams of dried mushroom. I wanted to try out wools premordanted with iron and alum. I had only dyed with this mushroom before in a workshop with Alissa Allen (mycopigment.com). This gave me a great starting off point to explore more. I moved forward with two 8 gram skeins - mordanted with the iron and alum respectively.

Step 2: Chop Chop

I chopped up the mushroom with a pair of scissors. The vat quickly went an inky black. I then simmered the pot for about an hour before adding the fiber.

Step 3: pH monitoring

Like many of the dye mushrooms in the Thelephoraceae family, the colours benefit from a boost in pH. I used washing soda (Sodium carbonate decahydrate) to raise it at 1/4 tsp intervals. I used pH paper to monitor the pH throughout the dyeing process outlined below. The vat tends to go more acidic after each addition to the pot as well as just over time, so I made sure to check it, especially whenever yarn was added in or just before coming out. The pH started at 6.5, using the washing soda I kept it at a pH of 9 throughout the dyeing process.

Step 4: Into the sack

As mentioned before, I rely on inexpensive mesh paint bags from the local paint store to both a) keep my fiber separated from the botanical material and b) keep the fiber moving freely. I then pile some dye matter on top of the bag to weigh down the fiber. I added the two skeins after giving them a good soak in room temperature water. They were then simmered on and off for about four hours.

Step 5: Take a look

After the four hours, I took out the wool, gave it a rinse and had a look. It was still a fairly pale grey even at 1:1 ratio fiber to dried mushroom weight (100% WOF). I decided to add another 16 grams of dried mushroom and put the skeins back in. the final math was 2:1 ratio fiber to dried mushroom weight (200% WOF).

Step 6: Better greys

I simmered for another four hours and this time the colours came out significantly darker (see the two skeins on the far right below). I wanted to see how much colour was still left in the vat (hint: a decent amount), so I did two more rounds of dyeing at about one hour each of simmering. As you can see below, the colour did seem to max out at about one hour so probably no need to simmer it for hours as I did.

Final greys

I ended up doing three rounds of dyeing and the colours kept coming. From left to right:

2nd exhaust bath: alum then iron pre-mordanted wool respectively.

1st exhaust bath: alum then iron pre-mordanted wool respectively.

Main bath: alum then iron pre-mordanted wool respectively.

Olive greens

I also wanted to try overdyeing the polyozellus after dyeing some skeins yellow with onion. All four skeins pre-mordanted with alum. From left to right:

1. Onion dyed (30 mins)

2. Onion dyed (90 mins)

3. Onion dyed (30 mins), overdyed with polyozellus (15 mins)

4. Onion dyed (30 mins), overdyed with polyozellus (40 mins)