We went for a walk around the fields and woods near Cartmel today, and it turned into my friends waiting around while I shuffled around in leaves and fallen twigs looking for my beloved wild mushrooms. Sorry guys, that’s what you get when you take a mushroom fanatic into the woods!

After what should have taken 10 minutes but ended up taking an hour, my friends finally got me out of the woodland. But not before I took photos of these beauties!

Common Earthball

Me with a couple of fine shroomy specimens
Yes I am aware that this photo makes me look like a massive nerd. :]

So anyways, I thought that was it for the day in terms of fungal friends, but nope, on the way back into the village, I was delighted to see these beauties!

Shaggy Ink Cap

So yes, I was very happy to see these. So happy that I leaped over the fence with some help from Charlie and went about excitedly taking photos. All the while being laughed at by random old folk who were passing by.  But I, as a true geek, cared not. :]

Anyways, believe it or not I did take some photos of things other than mushrooms. And I didn’t spend the WHOLE time rummaging through leaf litter. We in fact did some shopping of the very girly variety (think fruit-scented soap, cupcake lipgloss, shiny jewellery, Peter Rabbit mini chocolate figurines) and I of course had to purchase something. Because I cannot help but spend money. </3 However, if you look at the following you will see that it was money well spent!

ISNT IT GORGEOUS <3

The weather today turned out to be surprisingly non-shite, despite the fact that I wanted to die when I first opened my curtains this morning and saw the hell on earth weather out there. But alas, by about 1:30pm it had brightened up and it was even quite sunny with some blue sky! Yes, BLUE SKY!

And to finish off this rather long post, here be our compulsory silly self-timed group shot. Complete with me being picked up by Charlie like I was some kind of doll (well apparently I weighed like one, time to get me some muscle perhaps?!)

I found that they were doing 3 for 2 on all MaxFactor stuff, and throwing in a free bag as well! So of course the money in my purse just begged to be spent on these very useful and nessecary items. Like it does, ya know

So I tried them when I got home, and thankfully they are prettyyyy and not shite! Took a few coats to get them looking great, but then they dried super quick so I forgave them

And then whilst innocently browsing Wilkinsons for sellotape, this intriguing new chocolate from Cadburys somehow ended up in my hand all the way to the till.

Since I am a massive ‘ho for Cadbury, the buying of this particular item just had to take place. I munched it later on and it was as epically delicious as I’d anticipated.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Yes I fancy another nibble.

Then finally, on the way home, I was crossing the grass clearing and this tiny little mushroom caught my eye (yes, I do scan the ground for them 100% of the time haha)

Identified as “panaeolus foenisecii”, grows in freshly mown meadows and lawns after rain.

panaeolus foenisecii - the photo looks much lighter but that's the one!

Before you ask, no, there isn’t a great deal going on in my life at the moment haha!

Yes, wild mushrooms… I’m a bit of a mushroom hunting fanatic, and have been since about the age of 10. There’s something totally awesome about roaming around in woods and fields and seeing a variety of freshly sprouted mushrooms in all shapes and sizes, then trying to identify them. I have more than one identification book, which says something about me really.

Before you start, no I don’t eat any of the wild mushrooms I find. I looooove eating mushrooms and am usually found lurking about in the vegetable section of Tesco buying the different varieties in there, but wild ones? Nope.

So anyways, without further ado, I present to you the recently-taken photo that inspired the name of this blog (well that and the fact that I’m shite at making up names)

If you don’t think this is cool, then… then… go away

This is the “Glistening Ink Cap” (Coprinus micaceus) found on and around an old tree stump next to a stream in Abbots Wood (near Furness Abbey). There was lots and lots of them, which made up for the fact that I found hardly any other cool mushrooms on this particular walk.

But I did find the tiny orange “Deciever” mushroom (Laccaria laccata):

It has a purple twin, the Amethyst Deciever, which I found a couple of months ago, no photos of that one though.

Non-mushroom photos I took on the Abbots Wood walk:

So there you have it, some attempts by me to take decent photos! I’m no photographer as you can see but I do try, using the rubbish old camera I’m stuck with, at least until I get money!