I bought the farm!

A shiitake mini-farm, that is.

This happened a few weeks back and I just got too busy to post about it but I think it's the darnedest thing. You're probably wondering to yourself, how (or why) did you get this... urr... thing?! Well it so happens that I won tickets to the 39th annual Fungus Fair hosted by the Oakland Museum of California and the Mycological Society of San Francisco. And it was blast! There were lectures, cooking demonstration and booths to buy stuff related to mushroom. Far West Fungi had a booth and their mushroom blocks seemed too good to pass up. When you buy them they don't have mushrooms on them, you have to wait for them to grow and mine grew quickly.

A week with farmer Jacquie

Here's my first crop! Supposedly I'm going to get three but I'm not sure if I've been taking proper care of my block. But my first go wasn't so bad!

The first crop

The mother mushroom

Anyhoo, I made this:

Into this:

I don't remember what I used. I just kinda pulled things out of the cabinet but it had a bit of a Japanese taste to it. I know mushrooms can be a contentious issue for some (ok, maybe just in my household), but I honestly can't get enough mushrooms!

The coolest thing at the fair was the yarn dying demonstration. Yes, dying yarn with mushrooms. I know what you're thinking, "Oh, how many colours of drab did they come up with?" That's exactly what I thought. But I was WRONG. You can get a whole rainbow of colours.

I was so smitten with the process that I bought the how-to book. Actually, I bought a couple I was so blown away. Might make a good gift for one or two of my yarny friends...