Urea-based Indigo Vats

How Midevil... And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A small garbage can full of fermented urine that you dissolve ground, pre-reduced natural indigo into by putting the indigo into a nylon stocking and soaking it in urine, then wringing it out until it’s all dissolved…. It’s kinda like doing laundry by hand? Except extremely smelly and horrific if it splashes. So once it’s dissolved, then you add the yarn and stir and leave it sit for a few weeks. That simple right? Except that the dissolving was supposed to be done for when we got there and it wasn’t, so Indira and I each had a vat of our own to dissolve indigo into—which took us over 2 hours. Over 2 hours standing over a tub of urine, continuously dipping and re-dipping a stocking full of indigo into it. Then, once we got it dissolved, we had to hunt for the yarn (which was also supposed to be there and weighed already). And instead of just weighing and adding it, we had to wait for the weavers to stop arguing over how much yarn each of them got to add to the vats before we could get things finished. And now? 3 weeks to wait. And then we can add more yarn to the vats for an exhaust dye.