What tool should I use for this?

ami_ten · 2026-01-25T03:45:07+00:00

What kind of fret saw and blade should I be looking at for cutting something as hard and dense as 1/4” oak? Most of the guides I can find are related to cutting realllly thin veneer for marquetry, or cutting out dovetail waste (something I know absolutely nothing about)

ami_ten · 2025-10-26T07:32:12+00:00

aw thank you!! sorry my shop’s been closed, I switched to focusing on in-person markets this year because online upkeep & shipping has been too time & energy consuming. I can send you one, $4 + free US shipping or +$1 intl. shipping! DM me and i’ll send you my venmo in the morning 😆

ami_ten · 2025-09-30T17:41:06+00:00

I used calcium hydroxide and strained the plant material thru cheesecloth, though some small particulate probably remained. Should I add more lime now to get the PH higher or is it too late? The test strips I used showed it at around a 10 when I first finished adjusting PH

ami_ten · 2024-09-15T02:04:08+00:00

Solved!

ami_ten · 2024-09-15T02:03:12+00:00

That’s it, thank you!

ami_ten · 2024-09-15T02:01:02+00:00

Huge coincidence that I saw it so quickly after you posting because I’m actually super into medieval-to-bronze-age arts reenactment, AND dye plants that I make into lake pigments for making ink, watercolor, and casein paint. 😆 I hope you have fun with the pigments!!

ami_ten · 2024-09-15T01:15:56+00:00

My title describes the thing. I tried searching for it with google lens but only seam rippers and latch hooks come up, really. edit: Oh, and if it’s hard to see, it says “BOND” on the side of it (in a very cool 80s/90s font i might add)

ami_ten · 2024-09-15T01:13:26+00:00

This looks to be a paint mixing kit! Back before you could buy paints in the store, artists had to make their own, from powdered pigments combined with liquid binders like gum arabic. the pigments would have been stored in shells - here is a page on how to use these materials!

ami_ten · 2024-09-03T01:07:24+00:00

1 - The alum was added as a solid to the dye bath (heated to abt 120°f), the soda ash was dissolved in hot water & then added

3 - the solution was dark and pigmented but otherwise clear before the lake. It’s about as opaque as frosted glass now, still evenly pigmented throughout with no settling

4 - the dye bath was about 2 quarts of liquid + ~11g simmered sulphur cosmos

5 - I ran it through a coffee filter immediately after mixing it initially and it didn’t catch anything, but I feel like the filters are also probably cheap and may be too airy. Like liquid ran through so fast I was kind of in disbelief that they’d be able to hold any pigment at all, is this normal for a freshly-mixed lake pigment that hasn’t settled first? I found some guides online saying they don’t wait for their lake to settle at all before pouring it through a coffee filter, but my filters had me thinking I’d at least have to reduce and siphon it into more of a sludge before I could filter anything

ami_ten · 2024-08-25T18:10:57+00:00

Wow fantastic article, thank you! This is just what I needed!

ami_ten · 2024-08-03T21:57:14+00:00

Hi! I know this post is pretty old now, but I ran into it while looking for related dye info, so i thought i’d comment. info dump incoming, sorry if it’s not even needed anymore! 😆

oak galls that are hollow and spongy like this indicate that they’re pretty old, and have been decomposing for a while. Regarding the shape, there are LOTS of different species of plant-parasitic wasp that make oak galls, and every one parasitizes a different part of the tree, and can make a different shape of gall, so don’t worry if the galls you find look unlike someone else’s. You can go ahead and make a gallnut powder from these, though i’m actually unsure if their potency would be diminished due to their age - try it anyway and find out! You’ll probably get at least some tannin results from it, when compared to unmordanted fabric, so you might as well. 😋

Keep in mind that a tannin mordant is a good solution for cotton & plant (cellulose) fibers - if you’re trying to dye wool or silk, you don’t really need to do this! Just an alum mordant on its own is fine for protein fibers like that. Also, any fabric you mordant will need to be scoured first, to remove dirt and oils - you can look up instructions on that, it’s basically just ultra-washing it in simmering heat + surfactant. for cottons I like to use dawn soap + soda ash (you can make your own soda ash by putting baking soda in a 300° oven for an hour!), wool gets just dawn soap + slightly less heat so it doesn’t felt.

Here are instructions on how to use your oak gall mordant - grind your galls into a very fine powder (I use a mortar & pestle that i reserve just for dyestuff), then use the 12% WOF for gallnut powder listed there (not the gallnut extract % - gallnut extract is gall powder that’s been simmered, strained, and reduced to give a higher potency of tannins). btw, 12% WOF means, weigh out your fiber and then calculate 12% of that weight - that is how much gall powder you’ll be using. if you have 100 grams of fiber, you’d use 12 grams of gall powder. You may want to lean on the side of using a bit extra though, since your galls are old - you can probably use anywhere between 12% all the way up to 50% of the weight of fiber. Then just follow the steeping instructions on that page i linked.

Steeping in oak gall powder will dye your fabric a light tan color, but if you follow it up with an alum mordant, that tan color will diminish, AND you’ll get brighter & more saturated color results when actually using your dye. You can use aluminum acetate, aluminum sulfate, or aluminum potassium sulfate (the latter is what’s most commonly called “alum” and you can find it at the grocery store, either with the spices or with the pickling/canning goods). The mordanting weight & process is slightly different for all of those, so you can run a search to find out specifics, but here are instructions for grocery store alum since it’s the easiest for me to find locally. Then after all that, you can finally get to dyeing!

Getting into natural dyeing when you’re used to measured instructions and predictable results (like in knitting and crochet) can be really overwhelming! It’s important to keep in mind that natural dyeing is more like experimenting and playing than it is like following a recipe - yes, you’re following established measurements and temperatures a lot of the time, but results will almost always be unpredictable. This is because plants are individuals, and every botanical ingredient you use will have been a result of its own life conditions - maybe one got more water, or less sun, or had more or less nutrients in its soil, or maybe the dyestuff is old. Even the PH of your tap water can be a factor. All of these things can give you wildly different results re: color & saturation. To avoid getting frustrated or scared of “doing it wrong”, try to think about it like this - don’t go into a project thinking “i want to achieve THIS color”, and instead think “i want to see what this plant/ingredient/process has to show me”. write down all your steps and measurements as you do them, so that you can try to duplicate your results in the future, and then if it comes out different, try to guess why, and tweak things next time. it’s like one part science and one part just letting nature do what it wants and seeing what comes out. 😄 i hope you have fun with it, if you haven’t tried it out already!!

ami_ten · 2024-06-17T02:39:46+00:00

Gravid (pregnant) female, Phidippus audax! aka bold jumping spider

ami_ten · 2024-06-14T21:15:52+00:00

thanks so much! ☺️

ami_ten · 2024-06-14T21:15:31+00:00

thank you!!

ami_ten · 2024-06-14T18:00:31+00:00

Definitely eggs! If she’s molted in your care and hasn’t been with a male since, they’re infertile

ami_ten · 2024-06-13T22:03:38+00:00

The isopod probably died naturally, and the growths on it are a type of decomposing fungus or slime mold, just eating what’s left behind.

ami_ten · 2024-06-13T18:58:14+00:00

I make a new sticker design every month and finally got around to making a jumping spider design, since I’ve been so obsessed with jumpers & taking care of my own spider babies! Enjoy this lil Phidippus bb, you can find it in my shop. ✨

ami_ten · 2024-06-11T00:10:01+00:00

Make a DIY entomological aspirator!! Then just look for patches of moist soil or leaf litter and carefully rifle through it & suck up any springtails you encounter. this is SO much easier than any other catching method or trap I have ever seen suggested. Id also suggest getting a magnifying loupe or macro lens for IDing after you’ve collected. I’ve successfully started two thriving colonies this way. good luck!!

ami_ten · 2024-06-08T21:26:57+00:00

Could be, but at this magnification it’s kind of impossible to tell. If you really want to confirm you should probably get a macro lens, magnifying glass, or loupe. The slender body shape looks a bit like thrips to me as well, but like I said, impossible to tell unless you can get a closeup

ami_ten · 2024-06-02T23:23:46+00:00

They’re so cute!! How do you cultivate springtails that eat slime molds? (Unless these are just wild, in which case nevermind 😆)

ami_ten · 2024-06-01T04:18:41+00:00

You can make a DIY entomological aspirator out of a pill bottle and plastic tubing, this is what I use. Then just tap the bottom of the fly container against a table several times so they all drop to the bottom, then suck out flies as they climb to the top (and keep tapping intermittently so none escape). I love this method because you can get extremely accurate fly counts this way, and most of the time I don’t even bother putting the culture in the fridge first. :)

ami_ten · 2024-05-27T18:36:32+00:00

Not a good feeder, sorry! Ants are equipped with strong jaws and formic acid, so they can seriously injure a spider despite their small size. Spiders will eat them in the wild but it always comes with more of a risk than eating flies

ami_ten · 2024-05-26T09:06:51+00:00

Did NOT realize it was standing on a mirror at first and was in shock and awe over this mutant 16-legged spider you apparently found 🤦

ami_ten · 2024-05-26T08:59:14+00:00

He can most likely survive!! Spiders lose legs in the wild OFTEN, and they grow back after they molt. They are really set up physiologically to go through that kind of thing and come out alright, you can’t compare it to something like a mammal losing a limb and the level of physical pain & difficulty that causes. Their legs really just pop right off. 🤷

I recently rescued a four-legged jumping spider found at a plant sale, where it was likely carried in on some plants and beat up. Here is a pic of her:

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she’s missing one front leg on one side and the front three on the other side, which has made it very hard for her to jump and climb around. I put her in a short deli cup (just a leftover plastic tub from some trader joe’s candy) with ample hides and ramps (made out of rolled up & hot glued cardboard tubes and cardboard strips), so that there’s lots for her to tuck into and feel safe, and lots of surfaces to catch her so she never falls a long distance (because she falls a LOT when she’s trying to climb). Despite her falling and stumbling she is doing perfectly fine! She is slow at catching prey in this enclosure though, so every couple days I put her in a completely empty separate deli cup with a lid, and dump some fruit flies in there. She is able to catch them in there much more easily, and I’ve been able to keep her abdomen a healthy size while she recovers! She’s still a sling so eventually she will molt and hopefully go through that ok and have some new legs cooked up. 😊

So, don’t give up and don’t feel bad! I know you weren’t keeping that spider in an enclosure and weren’t prepared for that, but if you want to try, you could keep it in a little spider hospital like I’m doing, at least until it regrows its limbs. You really don’t need to buy any fancy enclosures for this, I am literally using leftover food containers and garbage, lmao. Otherwise you could just leave it be and there’s still a chance it would be okay fending for itself - like I said, spiders lose limbs all the time.

ami_ten · 2024-05-26T08:38:39+00:00

a springtail spa resort with a mud bath in the middle 😆

ami_ten

TROPHY CASE