New Silks

These pictures do not do these silks justice. A few moms from my natural parenting group and I put together a big play silk order. We spent one evening dying them ourselves. Its a lot of work but totally worth it. I had done this on a much larger scale about 6 months ago and it took us 9 hours! There were around 15 moms and over 150 silks to dye. This time though with 4 ladies, 4 dye colors, and only around 30 silks we were done in just a couple of hours. I really wanted brown, green and white (not dyed), for our nature table. Then of course I could not resist that royal blue and the yellow.

I'm using these to line K's easter basket, so I'm sure after sunday I'll have some great photos of him playing in the silks.

Snow in the house

I love winter. I love playing in the snow and sledding and hiking through the woods. K does not. He hates putting on boots, coats, mittens, and snow pants. He hates getting snow on his shoes. All winter long I tried to convince him that snow was fun. He is not buying it. Finally i decided to bring winter in the house. I've been wanting to do this project for a long time and now that the weather is warming up (40 today!) I knew we wouldn't have snow for long. I have to say that playing in dyed snow was so relaxing and fun. We ended up going through 4 batches. We'd get our snow, add dye, and play around with it with spoons till it was so mixed up it turned a muddy brown. Also another great project to get your floors clean. There was snow everywhere. :)

Silk Play

We are all sick here. First K gets Roseolla, then casey gets his appendix out. Then three nights ago K was sick all night with a stomach virus, last night casey and I were up all night with the same virus. Now my poor mother who has been nursing us is sick. What a mess we all are.
Well despite this I have finished the cherries and our little masking tape art project. I'll be back to post on that. Here are some photos though of K playing in our hand dyed silks. I tied them all together across the room and we ran in and out of them playing hide and seek.

Plant Dyes

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while back I put together a big co-op wood order with a group of friends. This was a huge task, but terribly exciting to receive a giant box of little people, bowls, rings, handles, etc in them mail. I have a billion different ideas in my head on what to do with the different pieces of wood and will post them as I finish them. The other day, in the middle of my gnome making it struck me that it might be fun to attempt to naturally dye the wood. I did a little research and discovered that most of the materials I could use wouldn't be growing this time of year in my winter state. So I made due with what I could buy at the store. I did 6 dyes. (shown in the picture in this order)
1. Blackberries
2. Spinich
3. Beats
4. Red Onion
5. Turmeric
6. Paprika

For the berries I mixed 1 cup of water to two teaspoons of salt and boiled. For the plants I did 2 cups water to half cup vinegar and boiled. As you can see the spinach, red onion (which I had read would give me green), and paprika didn't turn out too great, but the blackberries, beats, and turmeric turned out great! I also dyed 3 of K's diapers with the extra dye. (they are berry, beat, and turmeric).
All in all it was fun. The boiling raw onion made my eye water, but I'm quite happy with my results.

Play silk

A couple of months ago I jumped on the playsilk bandwagon. I bought 5 silks through a co-op and joined other moms in hand dying them. It was a lot of work, but fun. They turned out really pretty (the last one is on the nature table). C wouldn't believe me that K would have fun with them, but already he likes to play peek-a-boo with them, toss them in the air, bounce his stuffed monkey on them, dance on them, oh and his friend E came over and was wondering around the house like a ghost with them over her head. Very cute.