#diyink

Here's the thing tho, my homeschool taught me how to generally make ink, so when my son(my black cat Nick who desperately wants to be a warrior cat) darts under the outside fireplace and it winds up unended, the charcoal catches my eye.

The child for reference.

So I took what little I knew and used it to make a crude charcoal ink that works rather well as I prefer pencils.

The first step was to gather the best peaces and rince them well (this should be done with distilled water as tap water has the potential to breed mold over time)

I unfortunately did not get a chance to grab a photo of this part as I was bringing the child back in from the pouring rain.

Next I broke apart the charcoal as much as possible and began breaking it up by hand

This resulted in a rocky sludge which I put through a siv until I had a jar of water and finely ground dust, as well as a lovely set of charcoal rocks that to the best of my knollage will help with the seeds I'm planting(we'll see if it works lol).

(I also let it sit and then pulled off the top layer a couple times to reduce moisture and hopefully pull of anything funky that floated to the top)

Then I whisked the mixture well and let it sit and seperate

Now I know about how much pigment I'm actually working with.

So its time to grind and wet the charcoal pigment a couple times to get it fine enough to use.