Can you believe all this color came from Mushrooms?

Last month I was lucky enough to get into a mushroom dyeing class at the John C. Campbell Folk School. http://www.folkschool.org/  The class was taught by Susan Hopkins who came all the way from New York. I was amazed on the range of color we got from mushroom just outside my front door. We also collected mushrooms that were growing on the Folk School campus. On the first day of class we were delighted to discovered Inonstus Hispidus, a rather large crop of it growing in what appeared to have been where  lighting had struck the tree. I and another fellow student, Sandra took the mushrooms to the weaving studio to use the large scale. We were interested in seeing how much dye mushrooms we had.....32 pounds! It was when we were cutting up the mushrooms to dry, that I named it the "pork chop" mushroom because.....well that is what it looked liked when we cut it.

The gold colored handwoven scarf in the of the table was dyed with the "pork chop" mushroom.

I used an assortment of yarns and all of them took the dye just fine.  The mordants that we used was alum, tim and iron.  It was wonderful to see the color that came out of the pots! 
I am still combing the woods to see if I can find anymore mushrooms, but now that the leaves have fallen and it is getting colder...well I may have to just wait till spring!
Pam