What have you been up to lately?

We've been doing some stuff here. Boy, having a visitor at ours really cuts back on blogging/crafting time! Not a complaint at all, merely an observation. I often wonder how a lot of prolific bloggers i know of manage to constantly post while simultaneously looking after 4 kids under ten, harvesting apples and knitting a jumper. I suppose that when you want to, you can make time for anything if you manage time with a stern hand.


Above is a semi food related craft project, involving using KOOL AID to dye silk. We dyed some play cloths from Dharma Trading Co. over the weekend with some kool aid packets my dad sent over with Jonathan.

It worked so much better than i expected! And it was really easy and non-toxic seeming (although one does wonder how good drinking kool aid can be if it dyes fabric so well? Kind of creepy! Glad we didn't drink any while growing up!). You can only dye wool and silk with kool aid, but as you can see the colours come out really vibrant. Since the weekend i've found a colour chart with all the flavours and what colour you can expect to get out of them . . . looks like i might be putting in another Kool Aid order to Canada!

Basically, all we did was soak the blank silks in hot water and vinegar for about 20 minutes. In a pot, we sprinkled 1 package of kool aid onto the silk. That was the part Bea helped with. Then i added a little hot water and let the pot simmer over low heat for a few minutes. Gradually, the colour is absorbed by the silk and you end up with relatively clear water residue in the bottom of the pot. At that point i set the silk aside to cool before rinsing it. It required very little rinsing once the colour had been absorbed (so much easier than dying with fabric dye! i hate rinsing and rinsing!).

The best part about doing this project was the Bea could help quite a bit and it made the house smell like candy. She is very proud of her silks we dyed together and has been playing imaginative games, waldorf style ever since. . .