 Oh my god, what a color. What a beautiful shade. Okay, it's just enough to make a paste. Oh, I see. Pretty much everything that's in there is fine enough to use. Okay. Everything in there is going to go back on here. Okay. So, in a couple of hours, that will be dry powder. Okay. And it'll be pale blue like that. In order to extract the blue from this resinous waxy mass, we have to put it into a pot of lye. Okay. Or a bowl of lye, and work it around with sticks. Okay. So, the pot ash lye that we're going to use is made from wood ashes. Okay. That's why it's called pot ash. It's ash in a pot. So, these are the ashes right here. Okay. And I'm just going to put them into this pot. All right. And then we're going to heat up some water and pour that in on top of them. Okay. The product of that will be this, which is an amber fluid. This is what you get after you pour off whatever fluid is separated from minerals that go to the bottom. Okay. You've skimmed off the ashes from the top. So, this is... So, it's a pretty intensely basic solution? Yes, it's very alkaline. So, that will work on the resin mass, the lapis lazuli. I should say the lazurite particles will come out into the pot ash solution. Mm-hmm. And then the calcite and some pyrite will generally stay in the matrix longer. Now, it'll eventually work out as well. Okay. And that's why we do it in several small batches. Okay. So, we make up some warm pot ash solution here first. And then we work the pastel for a while with that. Okay. And the best blue will come out first. You know, there'll be more blue released than the white calcite. And so, that's part of the utility of needing that so often and kind of letting it cure. Well, we're trying to just mix it up. Yeah. Okay. And then we just kind of embed in the wax. Well, we shall hope. Okay. Yeah. So, this is boiling water. Coming in with that. Yeah. And it's called pot ash because there's a pot and there's ash. We just pour that over it. Now, another way to do this would be to put it into a big stack of straw or other reeds or even cloth and filter it that way. But it's not really necessary to do that. Okay. We're just going to give that a little stir. Okay. And our next step would then be to draw off the fluid. But this has to settle. It really does look like it needs a couple of Shakespeare's witches stirring it though. So, what I'm going to do here is I've taken a cloth and I'm going to just pour everything into the cloth. And then it's going to get lifted. And it's going to take a while to drip through. Okay. So, you're going to treat it like a cheese cloth, basically. Somewhat, yeah. Yeah. Right? That is quite sludgy. Oh, yeah. And this is just from your fireplace here at home, right? Yep. Now, normally you'd want to use something like oak wood. So, if I just let that drip, you can see we're getting the right stuff. Right. But from touching it, it feels soapy. Okay. Okay. That's how we know we've got the right stuff, that soapy feeling. So, what I do not want to do is squeeze this. If I squeeze this, I'll force the ash through the fiber. And that would totally ruin what we're trying to do here. Right. So, the next thing to do would be to tie around here and just hang it. And is there, do you go for a particular ratio when you're making this of ash to water? I did this one to one ash to water. Okay. Okay. We'll get out some page, strip and test it. Yeah. But when I touch it, it's just soapy. Right. Right. At this ratio. Okay. The next thing I'm going to do is put the pastel into the warm lye. All right. And then I'm going to work it with these sticks, which I'm also going to grease with a linseed oil. Just bamboo chopsticks? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Just a good... Just because the lye is warm. Yeah. You want to be kind of joking with it. You see the blue is already coming out. Already, yeah. It's doing its best to stick on to the bottom of the bowl. Right. Right. Yeah, because the bowl is warm. I'm sure it's kind of melting to it. Oh, yeah. I can see the change in color. This is how it's done. You can do this multiple times. In each time, you're getting a successively lower grade of the ultramarine. Yeah, because what's happening is the laseurite comes out easier than the calcite. Right. But it's not like the calcite is not going to come out. Right. So the more you work it, the more the calcite will be released. Right. The lowest grade is the lapis ash, as they call it, which is kind of that blue-grey. We're going to put the cloth in here. And we're going to pour our lapis laden fluid into it. So a little of the scum is trying to get in there, which is a good thing I've got the cloth this time. Yeah. All right. And we can wring the blue right through. Okay. Because what you're trying to do is capture the solids in the cloth? No. Well, if there's any of the resinous gunk, that'll come out in the cloth. Okay. Oh, I see. Yeah. And then... Then we're going to let this settle here. Yeah. And we can... Oops. We can pour off what we can of the... I'm going to lift a little scape hatch there. We can pour off what we can of the clear lye after it's settled. Right. And then we draw off everything else by pouring it back into the brick. Okay. We have a nice blue settled into the bottom here. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's gorgeous. So I'm just going to pour off most of the fluid that's on the top. We're going to let a little run out because I'm just going to return that to the bowl, the original bowl, the looked at in there. Oh, wow. So let's just return that in here. Oh, I'll do that later. All right. And now I'm going to put a little more water in on here. Okay. So that we can pour it more easily into the brick. Right. So you can see the blue really well down there. Yeah. So we'll stir it up before we pour it in. Right. Once it's good and agitated, then just a matter of pouring that off. Would that be enough sample for you? I think so, yeah. All right. Oh, that's fantastic. So it's not entirely dry yet. I'll just scrape it a little and show you what's in there. So when it dries, it'll be lighter than that. Yeah. But still it's just stunning.