I was a weird kid with a lot of obsessions, mostly obsessions centered on the natural world (although I did go through an all-things-ancient-Egyptian phase at one point). Of course I had a rock collection (Guys. I still have it.), and I remember the few agates and geodes I had were my favourites. The complexity of the mineral patterns was always good for hours of staring and imagining tiny landscapes with tiny people and tiny animals, and you get the idea.

I have to say I’m happy I haven’t abandoned all of the fascinations I had back when I was little, and was pretty darn excited to find these beautiful images from flickr user, Captain Tenneal. Be sure to click over to see them full size.

I’m hugely excited to finally make this little announcement today. The shop now offers a very limited, special edition piece by Erin Considine created only for Pour Porter. Erin and I had been discussing doing something like this for several months and I was bowled over when she sent pictures of the completed necklace. I think my emailed response contained an offensively large number of exclamation points and caps! The necklace’s simplicity coupled with the variety of textures and subtle colours perfectly captures what I feel is the shop’s aesthetic -simple but interesting. (All pictures below by Erin Considine)

Now, no special edition piece would be complete without a backstory, and this necklace has a really wonderful personal angle to it. Erin was able to vacation near the Catskills in the early summer and went mushroom hunting in between rain storms. She uncovered a cluster of what she believes were a species of the genus Boletus, and transported them back to her studio.

Erin is fascinated by the boundless diversity of natural dying, and is always looking for ways to integrate what she discovers into her work. A batch of mushroom “liquor” was in order and after pulverizing and boiling them, she added iron sulphate and silk fiber, letting it steep overnight. The following day, the silk emerged a beautiful silvery grey, green. Dyes made from mushrooms are each wholly unique because the colour they produce is completely dependent on weather, soils, region, and age upon harvest. So now Erin had a lot of subtly tinted silk but its use wasn’t determined until Erin paid a visit to her grandfather’s garage-cum-workshop in Illinois.

In what most people would have seen as a garage stuffed with useless junk, Erin found an abundance of things she could incorporate into her creative process. While her grandfather has Alzheimer’s, he was able to share a story for each tool in the garage and what he had made with them over the years. With this newfound historical knowledge of the things she helped her grandfather sort through, Erin collected a hammer, copper washers, rivets, and other creatively promising objects to take back home.

This special edition piece is Erin’s response to the materials she’d gathered over the summer, and a wonderful reworking of old items from family storage. The necklace is constructed of vintage brass snake chain, her grandfather’s copper and steel washers, and that beautiful silvery mushroom dyed silk. I don’t know about you guys, but I love knowing the story behind an object, and this necklace certainly has one. Only three available. Thanks Erin!

Caught this video on The Artful Amoeba and science nerd that I am, had to share. I obsessed about a lot of stuff when I was little, and fungi, slime molds in particular, warranted a passionate devotion. The music is hilariously overly dramatic, but that doesn’t detract from the amazingness of time lapse fungal growth

Summer for me means fieldwork, and while that often equates to 10-14 hour days sweating it out in the summer heat, it does mean I’m outside and getting to see some really beautiful places, plants, and creatures. The past four weeks have centered around vegetation and wetland monitoring. We’ve had a really wet year so the vegetation is plentiful as are fungi, and all sorts of insects (including nasty biting gnats and mosquitoes). I keep a little record of interesting things I see while working, and yes, I’ve an instagram account (*cough*manufactured nostalgia app*cough*) where all of this goes! So here is a small collection of some of the stuff I’ve seen/done over the past month.