Mycopigments & the "Palette of Place"
What hidden hues does your particular patch of earth hold?
This post is a little different than most: I had the delight of collaborating with one of my favorite digital publications,
. A little more info on the piece below, but please go give it a read and some love over at their substack!
Back when I ran The Homestead Atlanta, it was always a treat when Alissa Allen came to town. Taking long and rambling teaching tours across the country, she’d roll up with a car full of yarn, hot plates, jars, pots, and an assortment of foraged mushrooms and lichen. It definitely had a little “Galdalf arrives at the Shire” energy.
Within the course of a day, we really saw her chromatic sorcery come to life. She coaxed dyes out of wizened mushrooms that you would have presumed could only create brown, a different shade of brown, or perhaps puce. But Alissa’s encyclopedic knowledge of these mushrooms and lichens and how to conjure their colors meant we each left with technicolor samples spanning the whole rainbow.
I had the privilege of writing a short profile of Alissa for one of my favorite online publications,
. It follows her on a foray through the Cascade Mountains and explores the unique way mycopigments show us the hidden colorways of our favorite places.I hope you’ll pop over and give it a read and a bit of love. I think the post is paywalled, but you can unlock the article for free if you are a free or paid subscriber. Be sure to check out some of the other fantastic work there (plenty of things aren’t paywalled); you’ll quickly see why I love it so much.
More magpie business soon,
Kimberly
I have more to learn about this earth than I ever thought possible.