These little marsh web caps were fun to work with. They were gifted to me by friend Kathy and they had been lovingly separated into caps only. The dye bath didn’t respond well to an alkali or an acid, the best color was achieved with a neutral pH which I found intriguing. To try to bloom the dye bath I added 1% calcium carbonate. When I laked the pigment and added sodium carbonate to precipitate the solution the liquid immediately turned pinkish red. The lake dried into a lovely pink pigment and the paint was very responsive and sensitive to modifiers producing an array of colors. I want to keep experimenting to see if I can get a pinkish red dye on the fiber.

When I first started my natural dye journey there was a group of us that formed a study group and we met weekly at the Oregon College of Art & Craft. One of my friends told me about Botanical Colors up in Seattle. From that point forward I became a customer of Botanical Colors and learned so much from founder Kathy Hattori. Over the years we connected on natural dye goods, mushroom dyes and eventually I tested some of the various dye mushrooms she had collected over the years. One day a lovely package from Kathy arrived in my mailbox and inside were some dried Cortinarius uliginosus. I had never worked with this mushroom and was pleasantly surprised to see the beautiful colors from this marsh web cap and am grateful to Kathy for her generosity in giving these to me.