boletus bicolor mushroom terrarium finished

 That little mushroom I showed you in yesterday's post has been completed.  It was inspired by the bicolor bolete (as clever Karen noticed yesterday), a lovely and edible mushroom.  I took a little liberty with the hue (hey, that's an artist's prerogative).

 

I added a slimy little friend, who I adore.  I had so much fun making him that I actually giggled while needling him into place.

 

I also added some pebbles and sporophytes in the moss, a signature touch for me.

 

I set this one into a piece of chokecherry from our woods.

You can see I'm gradually working a little larger.  Just wait until you see the next piece I'm working on.  It involves these:

This one will take me a little while to finish but hopefully I'll have a good start on it by this weekend.  I can't wait to show you when it's done.

Enjoy your day, everyone.

new wool mushroom terrariums

 

The other day I shared a few in-process pics of a new mushroom terrarium I've been working on.  I can finally call it completed and wanted to share its story.

 

Mothers aren't supposed to pick favorites, but...(and don't tell the other mushrooms I've made) this one could possibly be my new favorite.

Every bit of fiber and thread in this piece has been dyed using plants, roots, and nuts that I gathered from the woods.  By hand.  Me and my dye pot.  There are black walnuts, goldenrod, tansy, lobster mushrooms, wormwood, and more.  Tans, pale greens, yellows, pinks... That patch of moss is a grey-green given to me by an unusual mushroom called Peridoxylon petersii, and I've yet to find another.

 

There are blades of grass, and tiny flowers, and a caterpillar.

 

Even some sporophytes are hiding in there.

 

 I made the wood base from a piece of Osage Orange, a wood hard enough to make my saw spit blue smoke when I cut it, that came from my hometown in Illinois.  I left a bit of the bark on the piece as well as checks (small cracks) and imperfections because they made the piece feel even more natural to me.

  
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From the bottom of the base to the top of the glass, the piece measures about 8 1/2" tall.

I'm sort of taken with it.

 I've also managed to finish up a couple of teeny scenes too.

 

These little cuties are also hand-dyed, but not exclusively with natural dyes.  They are heavy metal-free, though, and crafted with love.

 

The wood bases on these are made from Alder, a wood that has a beautiful smooth grain.  I've left some character in the wood on these too. 

 I'll be having a little shop update on Tuesday the 16th at noon, central time, if you'd like to stop by and give one of these guys a good home.

s h o p

no chanterelles, but no matter

A few days ago I went for a bit of a crawl through the woods in search of chanterelles.  I didn't find any, but of course had a good time anyway.  Anytime there are mushrooms to look at, I'm happy.(click on the photos to seem them close up)

 

This guy faked me out more than once.  I saw that color and got all fluttery in my stomach, but alas, not a chanterelle.

 

I saw a few oysters, which are edible, but the bugs had gotten to them first.  Maybe next year I'll catch them.

Coral mushrooms are so cool.

I love these tiny and delicate ones.

It looks like a fairy dropped her umbrella.

I saw three large clumps of these and from a distance thought they were a maitake or a cauliflower fungus, but no.  I believe these are polyporus umbellata.  The bugs beat me to these also.

I like how this one is poised on the stick.  So graceful.

Uhh... okay.  I haven't ID'd this yet, but I'm guessing it's a type of coral mushroom as well.

Back in my yard my kids found this teeny guy.  This is one I've wanted to see for years and here it was right out my door.  It's a birds nest cup fungus.

See those black "eggs"?  They're part of the fungus.  It looks like there had been two more inside there at one time, and once full it would look like a little nest.

The wild strawberries are ripe and I had a little (emphasis on little) snack out in the woods.  I felt lucky to get them, my kids can sniff out a wild strawberry a mile away and mow them down like small grazing animals.

Wishing you all a good weekend.  I hope you get to sneak a little sweetness and wonder into yours.

from the weekend

With the rain we've been getting, the mushrooms are starting to pop. (click on the photos to see these closer) I haven't noticed any edibles, but I was super excited to spot this stinkhorn in my garden.  It will emit a stinky slime that encourages flies and other insects to land on it.  When they fly off, they carry the mushrooms spores with it, spreading them in the process.  Sneaky little mushroom.

Awfully strange looking, isn't he?

The lilacs decided to give flowering another go, though rather half-heartedly as there are only a few of these tiny clusters of blooms.  That's okay though, I love the smell of lilacs and am happy to have even one more sniff of them.

Beneath the tall grass and invading raspberry brambles there were some beautiful lilies. 

My nasturtiums are trying to escape their fence.  Probably because we keep eating their friends.

The yarrow has come up everywhere this year.  It's such a useful and lovely little herb.  It can be dried and used as a medicinal tea or mascerated when fresh and used as first aid, like a styptic.

Daisies.  My favorite.  I pulled these from the roadside a year or two ago and planted them in my yard.

I'm not a big fan of spiders but I thought this guy was pretty cool hiding in the leaves.

The bees have been busy.

Check out the pollen on that guy's legs.



Today looks to be pretty grey so I'm glad I got a chance to capture some of these colors this weekend.

Have a good week, everyone.

Sulphur Shelf aka Chicken Mushroom

I found my first Sulphur Shelf mushroom last year.  I almost walked right past it, as it was high in a tree, and I was looking down for mushrooms.  We cut down that first mushroom and marveled at how good it tasted and I've been keeping my head up looking for another since then.

On my way out of the woods the other day a flash of orange caught my eye and there it was, right at hip-level.  Thanks Mr. Sulphur Shelf, that made for much easier harvesting.  This guy was nice and young and tender.  He was bright orange on top and bright sulphur yellow on the underside.

I cut off about half, thanked him for his sacrifice, and skipped to the house to cook them up.  This was a smallish harvest so I planned to eat them right away, rather than cook and freeze them like I might do with a larger flush.

And speaking of larger flushes...

My mother in law spotted this huge one on a dead oak while taking a walk and shared pictures with me.  Having the poker face that I do, I squealed and frantically emailed her asking if I could come and harvest.  She agreed and I came home with about 10 pounds of mushrooms.

This specimen was a bit older than my first one and I had to trim a lot of woody and buggy bits.  Those I tossed in the dye pot.  The rest was sauteed in butter and frozen in serving sizes for this winter.  Sulphur Shelf is one of those mushrooms that freezes really well and it truly does taste like chicken.  It doesn't have any poisonous look-alikes but if you harvest, be sure to leave any that are growing on pine or hemlock.  Look for those growing on dead Oaks, to be safe.  (You can read more here).

Yesterday seemed like soup weather so I pulled out the mushrooms I had sauteed from my first find and tossed them in to a tortilla soup recipe.  Oh so good. 

The results from the dye pot were decidedly ho-hum, so much so that I didn't photograph them.  I'm sure this is because I was using older mushroomes.  I think that with a fresher mushroom the yellow would have been brighter.

So if you see a flash of yellow and orange in the woods this fall, check it out.  It could be your next chicken tortilla soup calling.

wordless Wednesday

I know this is supposed to be a wordless Wednesday post but I had to share my sense of abundance, verbally.  I went on a short walk in our woods the other day and within 5 minutes had seen a dozen different mushrooms.  By the end of my walk I had taken over a hundred photos of mushrooms.  The ones you see here are a fraction of what I saw, and I'm imagining that I saw only a fraction of what is out there.  Aren't they amazing?

As always, click on the photos to see them a little larger.