Playing it by ear

Following several recipes and sorta winging it.

For the love of the universe, don’t do what I did, which was assume that just because these galls have been sitting around in a plastic ziplock baggie for several days and have what look like exit holes they must be free of insects.  I cracked the third one open and BAM!  ANTS!  So I went outside and crushed the rest in the bag and watched all these ants spill out. 

There was one very happy daddy long legs on my back porch this evening.

I still need to mix in some gum arabic to thicken the ink a bit.

I was kinda hoping it’d be darker after adding a source of rust, but we’ll see!  This stuff darkens over time, so I am labeling everything to see what works and what happens to each mix over time.