Adventures with weld and FIRE

Today I stuck a pot over a fire and dyed wool yellow. I had one of those "yesss I'm so period" moments standing in front of real fire.

First, fire. I constructed a stand for the pot out of bricks and spare rebar, which is at least plausibly period if not very pretty.

I then lit a whole bunch of wood on fire.

... and fed it more wood for a while.

Once the fire was established, I added my dye vat, with a mixture of weld, fustic, alum, and cream of tartar, all from period recipes for yellow. I added my pre-mordanted (with alum) white wool and cooked this for about an hour.

I then removed the pot from the fire to start cooling, leaving the fabric in the pot.

Several hours later, it is still cooling, but my formerly white wool is this screaming yellow color. SCIENCE.