Snowy Monday 2

Ugh. This Monday was pretty much the opposite of last Monday in every way. Unlike last week, yesterday's snow was mostly slushy sleet and freezing rain. I also didn't actually have the day off, because I had to go into work for First Aid training. The instructor was confusing, intimidating, and gave lot of extraneous information, which made the whole experience pretty awful. Luckily it was just a refresher course, because I don't think I would have gotten anything if I didn't have some prior knowledge. Then I also had to run errands in the slush after work. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

Anyway, even though yesterday was a let down, I do have some stuff to share that I have been working on through out the week. I have been experimenting with different kid safe ways to dye wool for my felting class, and I made a couple of natural food based dyes to test. Basically I boiled the food or spice to get the color, added vinegar and a little salt, and then let the wool sit over night in the dye.

Red Cabbage


Beets


Paprika


Tea


I have tea dyed before, and liked the way it worked with the wool. I also got good results with the beet dye and paprika, but couldn't get the red cabbage dye to penetrate the wool. It just kept washing out when I rinsed it. Not sure what I did wrong, or if maybe red cabbage just doesn't work well without a mordant to set it. Oh well.

I brought the dyes I made (minus the cabbage) into class, and had the kids make some kool-aid and vinegar dyes. The kool-aid dyes were nice because they were something that could be totally made in class even though we don't have a stove, and you can make nice vibrant colors. Here is all the dyed wool drying.




And here are my dryed felt bowls from last week, all ready to be decorated with the new colored wool!