Dyeing Yarn with Easter Egg Dye

Last spring I came upon some posts showing how to have fun dyeing wool yarn with egg dyes. I knew we had to give it a try. So, I began collecting wool yarn and got most of it from a sewing reuse shop nearby. We had gobs of yarn and it was finally just the right time to try!

The yarn has to be wool or another yarn made from animal hair.

We chose colors that were in the same vicinity on the color wheel. This color wheel exercise is from the Hearts and Trees Magazine. R11 remember it just for the occasion!

R11 enjoyed preparing the dyes.

First you soak the yarn in a water and vinegar solution and you have to make sure the yarn is saturated. (1/4 cup vinegar to a cup of water)

Mix dyes with a half cup of water and a tablespoon of vinegar.

We made the hank of yarn into a circle so the colors would not bleed across sides.

We used a pipette on the second bath (which turned out orange all over!), but pouring is much faster.

Dye poured on and ready to go... seemed faded and I wasn't so sure.

Seal the top and cook the yarn in the microwave for 3 to 4 minutes. Five was good for us. You know you are done when the water is clear in the pan. It really happened! Clear water was left behind.

If there is still dye in the solution, then let it cool some and cook it again. The solution really will be clear when it's all done!

Once you are in the clear, rinse the yarn to get the vinegar off. The bathtub was suggested, but that proved scary for me as the dye did color out some in the water and my tub was pink. The night before a showing! (remember...house is for sale). Next batch I did right in the pan I cooked it in over my stainless steel kitchen sink! Much better! Comet and then some bleach took care of the pink. But I thought I might need a sign reading, "Late night art project...we promise we'll get it out!"

Hang the yarn out to dry and ball it when it's all done.

This was an extremely satisfying project and I'm happy to report we have probably 10 more skeins to dye! I also bought the grocery store out of egg dyeing kits yesterday! This is a great time of year to try out this sort of thing and it helps to soothe the spring fever in all of us. I also think it would be a lot of fun for Sewing Camp.

Embrace the fun of spring and try something new at your house!

Busy Hands

It's that time of year again. Our homeschool co-op has just begun again. Monday will be our third session already. The kids are busy taking fun classes like: Kid Concoctions, Cut & Create, Graphing, Arabic, Tissue Paper Flowers 2, Games, FIRST LEGO League, and Knifty Knitting. R11 is taking the loom knitting class and last week she finished up her first project- a hat. Then her 6 year old brother asked to learn and by the time she helped him, he'd had it mostly figured out.

The life of a homeschooler...she read how to finish her cap with a pom pom and sat down to read about the weather in our Cobblestone Magazine. I had to snap that moment in time!

J6 really grooves with the loom knitting! He carries his water bottle in style now.

He's halfway through a hat and I think Miss R needs her loom back to work on her next project. Wait till you see all the fun things the busy hands here make! It's good to have busy hands in March. Some days you can be outside and other days it's just muddy.

The Knit Kit

Here they are! The Knit Kits we gave to R's 7 and 8 year old cousins. One of her cousins had requested a craft kit and R11 wanted to make her own. We decided to make one for both of the girls.

A whole box of fun with yarn

R11 did all the labels and illustrations- cute stuff1

The finished apron with the markers and the directions.

Here are the directions for the pom pom maker- she personalized them with the girls' names.

Knitting instructions and size 8 needles

More yarn with a crochet hook. I also included a sheet with online directions for regular crocheting and knitting- I put the links for You Tube videos on there.

Here are some other ideas for yarn fun- including links for finger crocheting and knitting.

Yarn needles, a homemade loom, and directions on how to use the loom to make a bookmark.

We put in a list of the contents and a spool knitter which has its own instructions.

I had to show this close up of the weaving instructions- R11 did a great job on drawing pictures and showing the girls how to do something. She did a lot of work on these.

Stacked and ready for transport- these kits were Maryland bound and have reached their destinations.

The kits were received well although, R11 really wanted to spend some time showing the girls how to use the things inside and that did not work out as well as she would have liked. She wanted to be sure they understood what to do with everything. But the receiver of the doll apron decorated it right up and I'll share the result with you. I hope the girls enjoy the kits as they get to know the contents better. R11 luvs yarn...LUVS it. She was hoping to pass along some yarn joy.

Great job R!

Holiday Cheer

We finished our cards! Most are on their way. Holiday cheer for family and friends. Every year I contemplate my infatuation with hand made cards. They are time consuming and sometimes more expensive than you think they will be. Occasionally they add to the stress of the holiday. But in the end, as I suspend time and sit with my paper crafting, I remember...I do it because I really like making them! Maybe not all the stuff that goes with it, but the actual sitting down and handling paper and doodads? VERY high on my list of fun things to do with my time. Also, now that R11 is a serious crafter, we have fun working together. Last year I used watercolor my kids had done and cut the sheets into smaller elements for the card. It's fun to piece together things the kids have done for our holiday cards. I'd better start thinking about next year...

I thought you might like a peek at this year's design.

Scrap fabric, cardstock in handsome Christmas colors, stamps, ink and tape...lots of tape both single and double sided. R11 helped me out this year- she drew the template for the tree and helped to cut the fabric. She also cut the paper after I measured where to cut.

How fun are these fabrics? My personal favorite is the evergreen with cardinals, but that one in the middle with the gold holly? Mmmm....

I think my favorite part about this card is how the fabric changes the whole card. Plus, I luv the texture of the fabric with the paper. This was an idea from Art Projects for Kids from last year that we made into a whole larger piece of art last year. But I went back to the cards and thought about how to change things up with the fabric. Very satisfying results.

And there you have it...Dan and I just celebrated our 16th anniversary- more on that next time and the week before Christmas is always so busy. Next year I'll start earlier. Sure I will. I say it every year. Now if I could just keep a decent address list. It would go that much faster.

Merry Christmas! Remember, there are 11 more days to celebrate this season!

Christmas Crafting

We've been busy like bees over the last week or so working on Christmas fun. The kids and I had two days in a row the first week of December devoted to making Christmas crafts as a group. I offered up a chalk drawing the first day at our homeschool group event which was enjoyed by the younger crowd. The next day we participated with our 4H group and I had the kids make the textured tree project we did last year. Some of the projects were very creative. I learned that the events are back to back every year. I think next year we'll do the homeschool group and skip the 4H event. Simplify! Besides, I don't even know what to do with all this stuff!

Clearly, this one wins the prize! It's a lantern made from recycled bottles, doodads, and Christmas lights inside. Batteries make them shine in the bottle and the tuna can on the bottom hides the batteries and switch box. So clever! We have three at our house now.

All of my kids enjoyed the beading!

We have a wreath for the front door.

This was also a hit- wrapping wire and beads around the candles. We have some nice accents around now.

I also have some really fine swags of greens to put up- not sure where! But it was fun to see the kids enjoy the process of putting together some traditional holiday decorations and now we get to use them. We are getting the tree this week- behind on this one this year- we ended up sick after our big lego finish so here we are!

You all might enjoy some posts over at Simple Homeschool- there's an article on a Christmas Bucket List that I think is a terrific reminder on how to stay stress free during this season. Just a couple weeks left really until the big day. Enjoy staying focused on the Advent of our Savior.

Summer Library Fun

This year's NY State Library summer theme is Stories around the World- uh or something like that. The kids signed up for the reading program and have been doing the craft days at the library on Tuesday afternoons. E12 has been a volunteer to help and the other kids have enjoyed doing the crafts. We'll miss the last one due to our camping trip (in fact this post was scheduled), but the summer fun continues. I managed to get their book lists into the children's librarian today- only I forgot the library is closed on Saturdays in the summer. Don't ask...anyway, hopefully she finds them in the book drop! Don't worry, our book drop is a slot in the door that lands in a bin that you can see through the glass door.

They issued a paper with all kinds of Around the World activities.

This provided a great morning of entertainment at our house! I happen to really enjoy the book list.

The crafts have been from around the world and the god's eye project inspired a whole lot more of them! That blue one there is J6's. He's an expert!

We still have more summer reading fun ahead. I've planned a lot of things for our week long camping trip. You know...just in case things get a bit slow. There will be projects available!

Crazy Clay!

Sometimes R11 will just page through an activity book looking for some fun things to do. This time she picked up the Kid Concoctions book by John and Danita Thomas. These two have a neat story which I've heard at the MOPS Convention. Basically, when their children were too involved with video games and TV and they saw how their family was spending time apart, they shut everything down and made up these recipes as part of spending time together as a family. Pretty cool. And we get to benefit from their experimentation! All I need to do is be willing to go along with her inspiration. Enter CraZy Clay!

First we added cornstarch and baking soda to some water and began to heat it.

The recipe...when you make these know that sometimes you need to make a note of how you'd adjust it. In this case, I didn't let the clay cool all the way before kneading it and I think that would make a big difference.

There are four or so Concoctions Books. This one is a bind up of four titles- I think only available at workshops and conventions (at least it used to be that way). They have a lot of great ideas in there.

We added some color!

Just getting started with uniform color...

Lime green and red glitter...oh  yeah...

Now we're cooking!

Here we are...not a bad texture but way to sticky when it's warm.

Just makes you want to put your hands in that, right?

Just too sticky...we added flower.

See the glitter? I didn't add enough I don't think. Glitter comes back on you way too easily so I hardly ever unleash loose glitter. This was an exception to my typical rule of "no loose glitter"!

After this moment, I packed up the leftovers and completely cool it's not nearly as sticky. Live and learn. She made lots of doll house furniture and got her brothers involved the next day.

I wonder what we'll do next. She has an affinity for papier mache so maybe we'll try that. I think she also wants to try some window clings, but not sure I'm not sure I'm up for them going on my window. Sometimes that stuff doesn't come off! What summer adventures are you having so far?

Survey of the American Girls II- Kaya

We are rolling right along in our American Girl co-op class. Only three more Mondays left now. We spent the last two weeks studying Kaya- a Native American girl from the Nez Perce tribe in the northwest. We learned a little about the tribe using a story from the Native American History Pocket from Evan Moor and we did a map of course! Since Kaya and the women in her tribe were weavers, we did a weaving project. R10 has been making these really cool bookmarks from yarn. She is really creative with all the craft books she has and this project came from one she picked up at the library book sale. With her being the expert, I let her teach the girls how to make the loom and do the weaving. It's really a clever project.

This is a great book with some fun ideas for kids. R10 does a lot of projects from here.

R10 has been really into yarn so I made sure to pick up lots of different yarn for the girls. They paid a $6 fee to take the class so I have some leeway.

These are the looms. We made them from thin cardboard and we reinforced them with another piece glued on in the middle. The key here is to mark the looms with quarter inch marks on the top and bottom then to notch out the ends for the yard to catch. Being careful here is important or you can see that you won't have enough strings or there will be an uneven number of notches between the top and bottom. Basically this means a funky bookmark!

The girls used another small piece of cardboard as a bobbin for their yarn to wrap around. You actually weave in and out with the whole bobbin not just the yarn. The other piece of cardboard under her hand is the treadle. I forgot to get a picture of them using the treadle! You weave the treadle in and out and stand it up to make it easier to weave your bobbin through. Very useful.

It's starting to take shape now. This is a bit time consuming if you've never done it before, but if they enjoyed doing it, they can make more. I like the variegated yarn because it makes a colorful bookmark.

Kaya approves of her new "mat"- we did observe of course that she would not have weaved a bookmark but mats and baskets, etc.

This class has been loads of fun! For new readers, we had a class in the fall as well. I typically spend two class periods on each girl and we do maps and learn about the US in her time. We talk about the culture of the day and we do a craft project. Last semester I did some cooking as well, but crafts are easier! Our next girl is going to be Rebecca or Julie...not sure which one yet. I have a few days to decide. I'm waiting for the Pleasant Company to come out with the 1984 girl. I am envisioning what she'll be wearing- maybe leg warmers and jelly bracelets? Or will she be a preppie '84 girl? She's bound to show up just to freak us all out- a 1980s HISTORICAL doll.