Kitchen Experiment- 2

The first kitchen experiment dealt with Mordanting and some yellow mushrooms from Jack in The Box. There was also some interesting play with my Tea Tree bush and the Macadamia nut tree.
Now that I have some yarn pre-mordanted, I am ready to play again. Eduard and I went on a field trip and collected- Pussy willow flowers, dried wild buckwheat, bark from eucalyptus trees, puff ball fungus, shelf fungus, and lichen.
Today, in the kitchen, I brewed some pussywillow by boiling/simmering it for 1 hour, straining the broth, then simmering a collection of pre-mordanted yarns for 30 minutes. Nice outcome. Didn't smell awful. Not hard to do. Washfast. I will check for light fast when we get some sunshine.
Next, some wild buckwheat. It is brewing as we speak. But I have also started some other brews. Some of the lichen is soaking in a jar with ammonia added. Same for some of the puff balls. Different brewing techniques create different results, just like different mordants. Now some of the buckwheat is also brewing in ammonia.
I haven't decided what to do with the shelf fungus. It needs to be pounded to break it up, soaked in something, and probably boiled outside. Some of these things are a bit stinky to work with. So I thought I would see if ammonia works with the puff balls before I try another fungus.
This is the type of play I like to do when I am at home sorting through papers and feeling crushed by the weight of "stuff".
But in my defense, I will say that last night I spent two hours tossing and sorting. A full paper grocery bag of paper trash went out, and an equal size one is by the fire place waiting to burn. Two boxes of Office supply stuff got sorted, more things got into the donation box, and 10 inches of stuff got put into the file cabinet. I vacuumed more of the room and can actually see that the moving of the file cabinets will in fact happen this week.
So that is why I allowed myself a bit of time in the kitchen to play. I have tagged all my sample yarns from my experiments and am proceeding to write up my notes.
Unfortunately, the house does not look any better for all the sorting and tossing. Except for the shower, which I cleaned yesterday.