Early this morning, Josh and I went to the hardware store. We bought supplies for Thursday’s indigo dyeing adventure and a piece of steel wire to make a quill scraper, a tool used to scrape out the membranes inside the feather’s quill, which is where it attaches to the bird. Once home, Josh headed out to the garage, and within about 45 minutes produced a scraper, similar to the one found in yesterday’s quill cutting video with Mr. Ruud. All told, it measures about 8″ in length and is a dandy little item.
And then, a bit of housework – dusting! It’s gotta be done – a bit of lunch, a nap, and onto the magic of adding Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate to my slightly fermented jar of oak galls.
Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate was not hard to find. I bought it from Amazon and had it within a day or so. The jar is about 113 g. – I need 50 g. for the ink. Thus, I weighed it out.
From here, it was time to add it to the oak gall mix, which has been out in the sometimes-sun since Saturday. I shook is multiple times everyday.
And now – oh, this was so exciting and beautiful! – the addition of the Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate to the oak gall mixture!
And now, shaken up, the dark ink of the Iron Gall Ink!
And now, another 24 hours out in the sometimes-sun. Stay tuned for the addition of Gum Arabic (25 g) tomorrow!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 
Ok I was impressed with the medieval ink, but am now wondering how the heck did medieval people have access to ferrous sulphate heptahydrate!! From Amazon! 🤣🤣🤣
Fraggy, God works in mysterious ways . . .