Lichen

I have read that you can make dye from lichen. However there is a big environmental concern with making this kind of dye. Lichen grows slowly, and harvesting enough of it to produce a dye can harm the local lichen population. So it's not something a person should do unless they really know what they're doing, so as to prevent damaging the environment. because of this, I never really expected to have an opportunity to try making dye with lichen.

Enter the November wind storm. A friend and co-worker of mine from Mt. Tahoma HS, who teaches plant biology, had several trees come down during the wind storm. Not wanting the trees to go to waste, she brought in tons of branches so her students could make wreaths and swags for the holiday season. Knowing that the district was keeping me in limbo over at Wilson, she contacted my principal and asked if I could come over to Mt. T and help out for a couple of days. When I arrived, and we got the branches into the building - she pointed out on one of the branches "look at this, this is lichen!" and proceeded to tell me how it was a symbiotic relationship between fungus and algae. and there was a TON of it on the branches she had brought in. I couldn't believe my luck - and during any moments when I wasn't helping students those couple of days - I was harvesting lichen. Since the trees were already down and removed from their environment, there wasn't any damage I could do by taking them. Lucky break for me, huh?!!

Since I don't really expect to find another lucky batch of lichen any time soon, I've been kind of hesitant to experiment with it. And since I've never done it before, I'm nervous about screwing it up. It's not as if I can (or rather should - since I really could if I were so incline) run outside and go get more of the stuff any time I want.

Wondering if I could get some guidance from someone who may have done it before, I asked Louis if he had used it before (and mentioned my hesitancy about experimenting with it). He hadn't used it - but made the very wise suggestion that I try experimenting with a tiny amount of it to see what I can get out of it.

Here's the thing about lichen - I don't know what type I've got (and there are tons of varieties - which I've read are difficult even for an expert to identify by a photograph alone), so I don't really have a lot of hope of discovering what type I've got at this point either. Some lichen will produce a red or a purple dye - while most of it will give you a yellow, brown, or earthy green. I have also read that the way to get the purple or red dye (assuming you have the right type of lichen) is with the ammonia fermentation method.

and here's the thing about the ammonia fermentation method - it's not exactly fermentation that's going on. it's probably just called fermentation because it sits for so long in the ammonia solution. I did find great instructions for doing it, though! I read that I need to use 2 parts water, 2 parts lichen, and 1 part ammonia. It needs to be aerated regularly, and covered between aerating. It also needs to sit for about 3 weeks for the color to develop. I've read that it may look yellow or brown for the first week, even if it's going to turn out red or purple.

So here's what I did:
I took a tiny little glass container (it's actually one of those little votive candle holders), and added a teaspoon of dried, chopped up lichen.



Then I added 2 teaspoons of water and 1 teaspoon of ammonia. (I found that using only 1 teaspoon of water and half a teaspoon of ammonia didn't provide enough liquid for a batch this tiny. those proportions would undoubtedly work much better for a larger batch, so i added more liquid - still keeping the water and ammonia in the right proportion to each other). You can sort of see in this picture that the liquid has turned a yellowish color. I'm interested to find out if it stays that way, or if I'll be lucky enough to get a red or a violet.



Then I gave it a good whirl, and covered it with plastic wrap. It's sitting upstairs next to my bathroom sink where I'll see it each morning and remember to aerate it by giving it a good whirl.


* I'm going to take a moment here to note that all of the kitchen type supplies you've seen me use for dying and pigment making are from a set that I reserve only for art supplies. Although they look like they're food utensils, I never re-use them in the kitchen for food. I'm very careful not to mix them, since accidentally contaminating food with art supplies can be quite dangerous.