THE ART OF USING TEA AS AN AGING PROCESS OR HOW I ALMOST
BURNED DOWN THE HOUSE
Using brewed tea to age fabric is a very old process similar to using onion skins to dye eggs brown for Easter, in case you didn’t know about such things?
It’s a very practical way to use common household ingredients.
First you boil a pot of water, then add tea bags
depending on the amount of cloth you're aging. I put six in about two quarts of
water and left it with the lid on until it cooled. If you have too much
material, you may need to do it a second time with more tea bags, which is what
I was doing the second time. I was really trying to change a white table cloth
into an antique white one. (I did this in the bathroom sink)
But it was time to pick up a friend we had invited to
lunch at a cafe nearby, so I put the second batch of bags in water and left it on the stove and intending to turn on the burner when we returned.
We had a delightful lunch. The waiters and waitresses,
who are unpaid volunteers, were friends of all three of us. We chatted with them,
some whom we haven’t seen for a while. Our guest, who is moving, was glad for
the chance to say goodbye to old friends.
We finally returned home to a horrific smell in the
kitchen. I did not intentionally turn on the burner, but it was truly my own fault.
Black sooty stuff from the pan was all over the top of the stove and the pan
itself was ashen colored and stuck to the glass top. I thought I wouldn’t
be able to pry the pan off the glass without breaking something, but I tugged, it come off and I was able to take it outside to cool. I went out
later to put it in the trash and I saw there were big balls of charcoal
inside which used to be teabags.
We had opened the windows and patio doors, turned on the
fans and the smell went away. We cleaned the glass stove top and it’s working
just fine. It wasn't possible get out some of the burnt on stain, but it works
fine.
I think God was looking over us.