Hippy Hippy Shakes

As a polymath, scanner, multi-potential or whatever name you wanna call people who have such diverse interests like me, I'll try something new just for the fun of it. A few weeks ago I started a project to tie dye some clothes. Here are my experiences.

I had a bag full of miscellaneous shirts that I'd bought at thrift stores and a few left over gray shirts from our business and because I'm a creative type, I chose to overlook a few flaws like random stains on these clothes. So I tucked them away in the hopes of figuring out how to make them pretty wearable items.

I especially like shirts with unusual collars. I had two from my grab bag, both with a coppery theme. One the main color blazed a brilliant azure or turquoise and the other sported a mainly green hue with copper, silver and gold sequins.

The green one I choose to color block to not detract from the pretty collar. Murry had the idea of using small bungee cords and that worked so well, I'll for sure use those in the future.

I bought some fabric paint, including some pens that looked glittery and some stencils and I already had some art supply stamps from long ago. I didn't end up using these on this go around, but my first tie dye experience didn't work out on every item I tried it on, so I have some tools future creative acts.

I saw some shorts and capri pants on sale at a local store I love to go to and after looking through the selection, they only had my size in white and one yellow pair of shorts. I just wanted them for pajama bottoms so I was gonna buy the yellow ones until I remembered all my used clothes in need of a bit of creative action too. I got one pair of shorts and one capri in white instead.

I had hoped to get a "cheap" package of dye in purple as that is my favorite color. I was kind of hoping they had some dye at the dollar store, but no such luck. While looking at the various dyes, I noticed a tie dye kit for the price of two of the single color dyes. I bought that and made a plan to try it out on my next day off.

Murry helped me set up a table and went out and bought a few last minute things I needed that we didn't have in the house. He's an excellent gofer and he snapped all the photos.

I carefully looked over the instructions and looked at all the various methods for how to do all kinds of neat effects. The kit came with nice thick bands, decent gloves, red, blue and yellow paint in powder form. The instructions said you could mix them for different colors. It said you had limited time once you mix the dye, so I had to tie everything up before I mixed anything.

It's very time consuming binding each piece. It came out really neat and especially great for my first try.

Next time I'll buy another kit and then I can use the old bottles to hold the mixed colors. I saved nearly everything. I'll also buy or find some really thick bands for better ties.

I experimented with clothes pins and maybe I'll use some clamps or something like that next time. I also have to remember to use gloves when rinsing the dye. I had blue fingers for a couple of days.

My boss told me that there's a wash that will make the dye keep it's deep rich colors and I think I will wait overnight before rinsing the dyes.

I might order the dye online and get extra yellow. I ran out of that pretty fast. My boss also showed me a neat effect using ice to make a neat mottled look.

As always with my blog, kind comments welcome! What are your favorite tie dye tricks and tips? I had loads of fun.

Somebody to Love

I started a Facebook Group with this title today. Here's what happened and why it's so important to me:

Somebody to Love

While watching an episode of Undercover Boss, I saw two hard working people talk about being disowned by their family. One for being gay, one for being a trans woman. I wanted to just hug them and invite them to my house for dinner. I turned to my husband and said we should adopt "kids" disowned for such a ridiculous reason. Thus was "born" the Somebody to Love project.

While no one "disowned" me, I definitely felt abandoned virtually from day one. Mom left me with sister who left me to get married and then my parents divorced and mom left me again to daddy. Then daddy got talked into leaving me to a cruel abusive babysitter, then back to mom, then back to sister, then mom. I feel like a ping pong ball and I'm not even nine years old yet!

When I finally left my family chaos and started adulting in my own world, my sister who took care of me when I was little, sent all these judgmental messages. She didn't approve of my man friend so she wouldn't call me at his house. *I* was supposed to call her. 

Oh my gosh, I just realized why I called my other sister all the time. I was following the pattern THAT sister insisted upon. Wow. I hadn't thought of that. Anyway, my mom and oldest sister wanted to hear from me not because they wanted me to have contact and be safe. They just had an idea of what they were SUPPOSED to do. How they were SUPPOSED to act.

In my adult life, strangers often treated me with much more consistent kindness than anyone biologically related to me. Well, my dad loved me. I had that. Only he had his own troubles and flaked entirely too much. 

So for lots of reasons, that include not wanting to pass along flawed genetics and flawed experiences, I chose not to have kids. Now that I'm "gramma " age, I feel the urge to have people in my life. Someone to call on their birthday, someone to bake turkey for on thanksgiving and someone to have as a kind sibling to laugh with and share that camaraderie that I've heard other families have.

So I started a group. Come check us out: Somebody to Love

Kind comments encouraged.