Experiments!!!!

Yes finally some more experiments. I meant to update this blog ages ago with a couple of experiments, but never got around to it and one experiment was ruined by external forces. Not in my case the dreaded ethics committee, but something far worse, which has interfered with science experiments down through the ages.

Experiment Four - Fading Ink

In this case not trying to create tools for espionage or magic tricks, but seeing how lightfast a huge bottle of artists ink I bought actually was. Why?? Well because I bought it to do calligraphy on award scrolls for this group I'm in, and didn't notice until after I'd bought it that the label didn't actually say light fast. Water proof yes, lightfast no. So having dipped a disposable chopstick (yes a clean one) into it to see how thick it was and having made some scratchings on a piece of paper, I had a test subject ready to go. Fishing it out of my paper recycle "bin" the day after deciding on this experiment, I left it on the windowsill of my office in the full direct sunlight from 23 stories up with no other buildings in the way for most of the day.
It sat there for an indiscriminate amount of time, but no longer than a month, before I noticed it wasn't there anymore - the blinking cleaner had cleaned it away!! Arrrrrgghlllle!!! And it's winter now, so there is a distinct lack of strong sunlight. So that experiment has gone on hold for a while.

Experiment Five - Skin bleaching

Somehow, I don't know how - as I wear high necked clothes for most occasions, I developed a large brown blotch in my cleavage, right smack in the middle of the canyon. As I have very pale skin, it's kind of noticable and to my mind kind of disfiguring. So I figured I'd have a go at varoius kinds of traditional skin bleaching methods. Well two. Buttermilk (mentioned in Gone with the Wind as the only thing that Mammy was able to get rid of Scarlet's freckles from having gone without her parasol at Saratoga, with) and lemon juice. I was going to take photos and put them up here, but that was not to be.
Not having buttermilk, but there being a stray lemon in the fridge I started with the lemon jiuce and with just a couple of drops applied each night after my bath, the splodge was gone in three days. Yes that's right dear readers - three days. So don't go paying tons of money to get blemishes lazered off - just rub in some lemon juice.