Some promising results and...questionable ones too.  Let's look at the jars, 72 hours-ish after starting this whole experiment.

Jar 1

Not all the much happening. It's not thickening up any more which is good. It seems like the raisins have sucked up as much water as they're going to, so now the flour mixture is a thin paste rather than a very thick one.  No bubbles however, as the instructions told me I should expect after 12-24 hours.

There is a change in the smell however. Not unpleasant and not strong at this point, but definitely different from where it was yesterday. If this continues, I may use some of it with a half-cup each of flour and water to see if I can't continue the reaction.

Frankly, I've not a lot of hope this will be all that viable.

Jar 2

This is the raisin/water/little maple syrup jar, as you may recall. Much better results.

This morning, one of the raisins started floating. A good sign! By lunchtime, four or five of them were up there. The instructions state that the raisins or other fruit should be floating once the yeast has really taken hold, and I think I'm seeing the beginning of that process.

No spontaneous bubbles so far, though. Some fine bubbles after stirring, which still haven't gone away a little later on, but that's fine. The water is still cloudy, which hasn't changed a whole lot. It's somewhat yellowish in the sunlight. There is a distinct scent, similar to wine, when I open the jar fully.

I'm very encouraged by these results. They seem to be proceeding exactly according to the instructions, and I'm hopeful that I can try using it in a recipe tomorrow or Friday.

Overview

The Twitter directions, I'm afraid, may be failing me. Hopefully not, since I really want this to work. Obviously just getting a bottle of dry yeast again would be ideal, but I'm not in a position to be picky, and I'm already on this road so I'll have to see it through.

I've resolved to establish Jar 3 on Friday evening in any case. I bottled my own beer back in December, so I have a stock of bottle-conditioned stout in my basement, of which I have one a week. My plan is to mix up a couple of tablespoons of that with a cup each of flour and water when I open my next one, and see where that takes me. I'm cautiously hopeful.

Thanks to the coronavirus quarantine, people have been stuck indoors and trying to avoid going out. That means that the whole concept of cooking has changed, for some people dramatically.

In the before-time, people would run down to the store and maybe get something pre-made. Fried chicken perhaps, or a couple of side dishes. You could always go back midweek if you needed to.  But in these heady days of going out every week, or every couple of weeks, for supplies, that's just not viable. Not to mention, you've got a lot more time to cook when you're not commuting.  So more people have been making stuff from scratch than in a couple of generations at least.

That means ingredients are now a premium. Notably: yeast.

And that's a huge problem for me, since I bake my own bread and really wanted to try making homemade "pizza pockets" (read: small calzones) this week. So what do?

Make my own yeast!

There's a Twitter thread that went viral from a yeast geneticist, who explains in kind of a rough way how to make your own. It seems like i don't have much of a choice, so I decided to try it out. And just because I don't really trust myself to do it right (justified, given I've failed at sourdough pretty badly in the past), I'm also trying a recipe from a different source. The latter recommends keeping track of what I'm doing, so here goes.

JAR 1

Combined roughly 3 tablespoons unbleached white flour, water and raisins in a jar, which I placed in the hutch over Roomie's desk. It's the warmest place in the house, so it should be fine there. the jar seals with a latch, which I may undo, since I've read you need to give the air a chance to escape. So if it's slightly, uh...ajar, that should be fine.

Nothing to report on today in any case. It's basically lumpy white mud.

JAR 2

A mason jar with a plastic screw lid. Combined 4 tablespoons raisins with a tablespoon of maple syrup, and 3/4 filled the jar with lukewarm water. The top is loosely screwed on so gas should be able to escape easily.

At this point, I have soggy raisins.

OVERVIEW

Nervous about the whole experiment. I harbour something of a resentment toward sourdough for being much more finicky, difficult, complicated, and far outside my comfort zone than it has any right to be. Although from what I've read, fruit-based yeasts which aren't real sourdough are a bit closer in results to the store-bought type. We'll see in a few days, hopefully.