New dye job!

And this time it's not on the kiddos' hair! :)

One of the activities suggested in our SotW book for the lesson on the Phoenicians is to make purple dye. They suggested using red cabbage and alum or frozen blueberries. Either of these options is much more pleasant than using snails, as the ancient Phoenicians used to do! And far less stinky!

Sayer chose the blueberry method. So this morning, after she finished her workbook pages, she came over to help me put the blueberries on the stove with a bit of water to simmer for an hour. When the hour was up we opened up the package of organic cotton onesies we'd just picked up and started dying them for Kylee, a new cousin due to join the family around Thanksgiving. We did two of the onesies as solids, and wrapped rubber bands all over the other two for a tie-dyed effect. The solid ones are now a nice red-purple beet-y color. The tie-dyed ones have purples and pinks and whites throughout. Pictures of the process and finished products follow - Katie, if you want to be surprised I guess you shouldn't look ... :)

Oh, and I saved the remaining dye. Froze it. Thought maybe we could bring it with us to Tucson and have a bit of a tie-dye party for the EMerald gathering ... the midwest folks shouldn't be the only ones to have tie-dye fun! Just need to figure out more colors ... purple only gets you so far.