For my project, I did purchase a kit at Hobby Lobby that had dyes, plastic bottles with tips to use to mix and then squirt the dyes, rubber bands, and plastic gloves. Since I am by no means an expert at this, for anyone interested in tie-dying as a fun project, I have included below some of the info I found on the web.

Step-by-Step Tutorials for circle and marble designs, plus a colorful beach towel, and other projects.

Photo instructions and tie-dye information

Information and ideas for tie-dying with children

Numerous videos showing steps to tie-dye

How to tie-dye and discussion on types of dyes to use, etc.

Here is something unusual to brighten your day!

E & O came for a week-long visit recently, and what fun we all had!! One of our activities involved tie-dying various t-shirts and one pair of boxers! I hadn’t tie-dyed in years and years, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to play in the dyes again.

Although you can accomplish the same thing dipping into RIT dye, I opted to purchase a kit that had squeeze tubes for the dyes. The kit also included five pair of gloves, rubber bands, and an idea page. Honestly, I think the squeeze tubes are the way to go–so much less mess and very little clean up after. We took turns using the various colors, but there wasn’t a noticeable wait because we could simply occupy our time with another color until the one we wanted was available. Once our masterpieces were completed, we let them rest overnight, trying to get the best/brightest color results. Then it was a simple thing to wash them in hot water to get the excess dye out.

Needless to say, ALL of the tie-dyed pieces turned out BEAUTIFUL. There is no way to get an ugly tie-dye result, unless you let the colors blend and get muddy. THEN, it might not be pretty. Guess it depends upon the beholder!

After the projects were dry, I ironed each one with a hot iron in a further attempt to set the color and, hopefully, prevent color bleeding later.

At the end of their visit, the kids presented their parents with their own special tie-dyed shirts, and they all wore their creations on the trip back home. No telling what fellow travelers might have thought upon seeing the four of them dressed in retro tie-dyed shirts. Maybe “I think I’ll go home and do some tie-dying, too!”????

We are dog and cat people, and we love animals in general very much. This video made me smile, and maybe you will enjoy it, too!

My last post featured this photo of the squash I was so proud of:

Two days after I published that photo, the plant looked wilted. I had been watering every other day because of our high temperatures, so I thought it must be needing more water. So I gave it more water. Didn’t help.

So I jumped to trusty Google and almost immediately found what did end up being the answer to the wilt – squash vine borers. The description was gross, but when we examined the base of the vine, this is what we found:

Turns out the ‘squash vine beetle’ lays its eggs right smack on the vine and when the little boogers hatch they bore into the vine and eat, eat, eat. Apparently they are ravenous eaters, because the damage was severe in just a couple of days. Everything we read told us that once the wilt is obvious, the plant likely can’t be saved. You can see how bad ours was by the time we discovered it. Yes, we pulled the whole, now very ugly and wilted, plant up and bagged and trashed it. Although it killed us to see what happened to the beautiful plant, we couldn’t afford to allow the larvae to drop off and into the soil. The info we got said they drop after feeding, bury themselves for a year in your garden, then come up and become moths/beetles and go about laying eggs. Arrrggghhhhh!

That spot in the garden didn’t stay empty long. We transferred a younger squash plant to that spot and we are watching to see if it will survive the transplant AND if it will succumb to the same fate as its older brother. We are told that if we wait until after mid-July we can safely plant new squash without fear of vine borers. They won’t be laying eggs after then until next year. So we’ll see.