The blizzard is gone. The sun is out.
Yesterday it was a totally different story. The wind howled and the snow fell… all night, all day…and then, all night once again! Keeping a long-held promise to myself, I hauled my bins of “things to dye” (stashed since the move) out of the basement. I was thinking that this might be a prime time to try some snow-dyeing…and to (finally) sort through the random piles of “this and that”…to toss, to keep…to dye! Such an industrious activity on a “stay-in-bed-and-read-a-book” kind of day…
But, actually, it was kind of fun. I felt so virtuous…After about an hour of sorting, tossing and folding, I had three bins of neatly organized fabric ready for some future work…and four piles of stuff for my snow-dyeing venture. I had vaguely assigned a “color” for each pile: pink, green, blue, and purple. This morning BEFORE engaging in any other snow-related activity (like shoveling), I actually followed through! I dumped my bag of soda ash (about three cups) into the washing machine and filled it about halfway with very hot water. I tossed in pile number one–the blue pile and let it soak while I had my breakfast.
I kept it simple. As I pulled each piece out of the washer, I twisted it as I wrung out the soda solution back into the washer tub (I was hoping to re-use it for each of the piles…SO efficient!!!), and put it in the awaiting bin. When the washer was empty of fabric, I tossed in the “green” pile! I carried the “blues” down into the basement (note, the door in the above photo…the mother lode of snow, right?) I set up a bucket with an upside-down plastic bowl and a perforated plastic plate (they elevate the fabrics up out of the spent dye solution once the snow has melted). Then I put in a layer of my twisted and scrunched stuff…it was pretty random…old linen napkins, a shirt or two, previously but unsuccessful dye experiments…found fabrics from the flea market. And, then, I opened the door and shoveled enough snow into the bucket to cover it all completely (sure beats hauling bags of ice from the grocery store!). I sprinkled a random selection of “blue” dyes…cobalt, navy, teal…over the ice. Since I still had room in my bucket, I repeated the whole process…this time choosing several different blue dyes…And then just because I could, I topped it all off with another big fat pile of snow…goes to show, there is more than one way to shovel snow…some much more fun than others!
I repeated the process…until all my piles were gone…Look at those lovely buckets full of promise…tomorrow is going to be a very colorful day! Can’t wait!