Re: raspberry leaf tannins (uhm, opals)
Now I'm really engaged. Picturing all these opals growing around your place. What a vision. The farthest I've gone with opals is making a gem essence with a fire opal, which was a wonderful inspiration, and is very good for people who are feeling their inner fire 'going out'.
Not much heat? sounds perfect. And of course if you want something like *real opals* it would have to be so.
from that site i linked to:
"Because none of the manufactured opal currently on the market contains water - as virtually all natural opal does - there are some who argue that none of the material can legitimately be called "lab-created."
So, would you call this synthetic? It's "lab-grown" right?
Well, kitchen and dining-room-lab-grown, perhaps. :-)
they're no "simulated", correct?
"If a piece of man-made opal doesn't contain water, then it is not physically the same as the natural, and it then doesn't comply with the FTC regulations of being able to call it lab-grown," argues Robert Silverman of Lannyte Inc., a synthetic gemstone dealer in Houston, Texas. He does sell manufactured opal, labeling it as a simulant. "[Calling Gilson opal lab-grown] is wrong, it's incorrect, but it's been promoted as lab-grown material by people who should know better, who feel it's close enough to be correct. But if it doesn't contain water, I don't see how it can possibly qualify as a lab-grown material."
I had something interesting occur with nettles and flax seed yesterday. I was laughing, thinking- I *know* this is significant, chemically-speaking, (and I'm no chemist)but to what purpose (or patent)? Maybe it has some relationship to your opals? (lol) you know I'm only half-kidding.
In setting flax seed to soak, for making crackers, I thought--why not use the nettle infusion, as the 'water' instead of overworking my hand blender trying to 'blend' nettle leaves into something like a slurry--as I've done before. They were good crackers, but, I like to try new things. So, I mix the nettle juice with the flax seed. All's well. But the thing is, it doesn't go mucilaginous
as it always does. So I add more seed. and more seed. I think I only used about 2 cups of nettle tea. (maybe an ounce and a half of dried nettles) and about 3 CUPS of flax seed. Bizarre. The final crackers are very dense, more like 'seed cake' (something about this maybe links to the plates in the opal, but I can't quite put the pieces togther...). Thy are like 3 seeds think, witrh almost no 'between matter'. So--Something about nettles. I'm serious when I say they are the Master. Did you ever look into Milarepa?
(He of the nettles)
Wonderful to hear about your opals. I would so love to grow some. Wouldn't mind waiting six months. We used to have aquariums with various crystals growing, back in the gem business days. Fun.
C