Nicole Alderman

And if you can't afford to buy pie or awesome permies stuff, you can keep this site thriving by extending Step 1 (be nice) to:

• Making helpful threads! Learn something cool? Share it here on permies! Experimenting with something permaculture related? Post about it here! Share what you're learning and doing...and you might just learn more helpful stuff!
• Ask your questions here on permies! This doesn't just help you find answers, it helps other permies, and it might bring someone else to permies when they search Google for the same thing you just asked.
• Help others! If someone has a question and you have some related knowledge, or want to research to help them, reply to their thread
• You could even sell your stuff in our Digital Market! This helps you, and helps permies!

Looking at that list, I notice that a lot of stuff you can do to help permies also helps you. That's pretty cool!

Rez Zircon wrote:Dang, And here the rest of us go out of our way trying to find unicorn poop!

Hmm.  It's probably a protein stain. Try one of the urine-odor removers.

Any idea how to make one? I don't have any urine odor removers on hand.

It makes me wonder: What is in a urine remover?

My husband says the stains look like hoofprints. That's better than looking like poop, right?

I had let the shirt soak in the super strong, soapy, hydrogen peroxide solution over night. At about 10:00am, I took the shirt out and scrubbed it by hand in the sink. No change had occurred, and the spots were still dark.

I then put the shirt in rubbing alcohol in a jar (closed in a bag) to soak. It soaked there until about 3:00pm...so 4-5 hours. No change.

I tried scrubbing the rubbing alcohol shirt with laundry soap. No change.

I spritzed it with vinegar and scrubbed some more. No change.

I then took it outside to dry in the sun (and to get a picture.)

So, I put the clothes into laundry soap, dial soap (had some lying around from like 10 years ago), and hydrogen peroxide. Let it soak for 2 hours.

When I went to scrub them, the dandelion milk stains had changed from light brown to dark brown. The dark brown is what they always end up looking like, but I hadn't realized that either (A) the cleaning, or (B) the water reacts with the latex in the dandelion milk to turn it so dark and brown.

I left it to soak over night and haven't looked at it yet. But, I don't have high hopes...

My daughter was having a blast picking dandelions today, and got the milky sap on her shirt. This has happened in the past, and I've never managed to get the stain out. It never gets lighter or fainter (they're little brown circles, kind of like stamps made by the stems).

Any ideas?

I'm just cheap and lazy, and just use gelatin sold for food. I've used the Knox plain gelatin (found in grocery stores), as well as bulk gelatin used for food (I usually buy Zint Gelatin). The hardest part would be keeping it warm. I tend to just keep it on the stove on like medium-low and use it that way--though it does stay liquid for quite a while off the stove.

I already have the gelatin on hand for making fruit jello...while I don't have any wheat because we don't eat gluten in our house for autoimmune condition reasons. Most people are more likely to have wheat in the house than they are to have gelatin, though!

One thing I'd like to try some day is attempt paper mache with gelatin. I tried it with gum arabic when I made my orange peal boxes, but it reannimated really easily.

Gelatin is harder to reanimate. Bookmakers like it because (A) it's stretchy, and (B) you can reanimate it if you need to with warm water. I'm pretty sure, though, that it doesn't reanimate with cold water. I feel like it would make a stronger, more flexible paper mache than wheat glue does. But, I didn't really find anyone attempting it.

Another option might be casein glue? I think there's a thread somewhere on here about casein glues being really strong. They do shrink and can crack if the stuff they're adhered to isn't flexible enough.. Maybe they'd work better in a paper mache?

When I was doing my Greek mask project, I accidently stumbled across this video about making traditional camel skin lamps in Pakistan. it's not quite paper mache, but it's super close, and fascinating to see how they made molds that they could crack out of their lamps.



It's basically like they're making a paper mache made with skin, (I'm assuming) gelatin glue, and plaster of Paris.

Their plaster of Paris is likely taking the roll of our balloon. White the skin=paper and the gelatin = glue. They even make a "paper clay" with ground up camel skin!

Since the lamp is made of skin/leather and (I would assume) gelatin from the skin, it's strong enough and flexible enough that you can bash it just hard enough to crack out the plaster of Paris without hurting the lamp. I think the same technique would likely break a paper mache mask made with wheat glue. My student with a wheat-glue mask had a fragile mask that cracked easily.

I honestly think a similar method to this was used to make the Greek theater masks. They likely used linen cloth (this is before the invention of paper) or maybe leather, and likely a wheat or gelatin glue. Whatever they used, it decomposed, because there's no existing masks to look at.

r ransom wrote:Also, is there any reason not to add clove essential oil to the mix?  It prevents mould and pests.  But it is an oil, and maybe won't mix?

When I bound my books with gelatin glue, I just added ground up cloves to the mix. I didn't have any clove oil on hand, and figured it would probably help. The book hasn't rotted, so that's a good sign!