This week on weird things my husband asks me to sew for him, a foraging vest. Specifically, a mushroom foraging vest.
Last fall, in the expansive opportunity of a ‘don’t-socialize-inside’ mentality, Jake started researching how to identify and forage for edible native fungi. After months of research and starting with the easiest no-poisonous-lookalikes, we found ourselves dining on several pounds of maitake mushroom, also known as Hen-of-the-woods. This pricey delicacy grows in our own woods and tastes unbelievable. Chicken-like in texture, with a fatty-meaty-umami flavor, and so high in vitamin D that we actually felt giddy after a large serving.
Subsequent foraging expeditions further afield, as well as happy unexpected discoveries presented the problem of how to transport large, often wet and dirty mushrooms without crushing them? An open basket is a good solution, but when out in the woods with the leash in hand, a basket is taking up a lot of space and mental energy. So Jake bought a three-pack of breathable laundry bags and asked if I could sew them to a vest large enough to go over an autumn jacket.
I bastardized a jerkin pattern and employed this….bohemian cotton print for the oversized vest, and before long I had an absolutely unhinged garment ready for transporting large lumpy mushrooms like tumors piled onto my husband’s wild frame. He will be a spectacle and a terror tramping through the local woods next October.
