Should Have Seen It Coming

 This weekend really threw me off, but with the kind of project I am doing, I should have seen it coming. To my horror and intense surprise, I pulled back the paper towels that encased my seaweed strips and found MOLD!!!!

This was devastating to me knowing that I would have to restart on all of this work. I decided I would throw it in the trash, go buy some more kelp, and soak it again.

The deal is that this I am trying to make this kelp moist again, or at least not hard as a rock(it would be nice if it was not slimy), and mold loves to grow in moist places. It feeds on the compound that I am using to preserve the seaweed and the recent high humidity did not help. Basically I was angry at first since this had not happened all summer when I left it untouched sitting in the paper towels, but it was happening now.

I decided to do more research on how to prevent this from happening again, because I don't want to make something and have it be unusable due to mold occurrence. I was extremely defeated, but I needed to see this as an opportunity to start fresh. An opportunity to try out different ways of connecting the seaweed strips or even obtaining them. I realized that once I solved the problem I was having before with using to much of the compound in the soaking process as to leave dry residue of it on the outside of the seaweed, the mold would probably not form. The compound would be safely stored inside the cells of the kelp and not on the outside where the mold can feed to grow.

With that said I am starting anew with a bach of kelp already soaked and sitting(no mold has formed yet). I am going to try to use a smaller hole punching method and maybe a different type of string. The process in now revised and more shapely.

With this new mindset, the old moldy strips even came out of the trash and where wiped clean. The mold was only really on the surface, but that is not to say that it will not form again. I knew there would be challenges in this Genius Project, but it is times like these where I can now see it as an opportunity to find out more to make the project the best it can be. Hopefully next time something happens I can skip the bummer and go straight to the optimism.