Tie Dying

Rebecca is one of those fantastic ladies who while sometimes takes a wild ride on the train to crazy town, most of the time its a good kind of crazy. She's always making. She's a maker of things. If you want to feel inspired, watch her finger some new fabric she's just bought, or pull out plastic baggies filled with different kinds of beads and talk about its potential, her plans for its future. The best part is unlike most, she follows through. If you stop by a few weeks later, you can see the finished product, a gorgeous skirt, or a stunning necklace. There is no bullshitting in Reboc's world.
She decided that the latest thing of interest, besides learning French (she's in Paris right now, don't you know? Avoir l'amusement ? Tu me manques! Et dites bonjour a Agathe pour moi!), is learning how to tie dye. She invited her "besties" over for a day of fun in the sun and Avatar-blue hands.
When I got on the roof I was, admittedly, a few minutes (or an hour) late. But this is how I roll. Everyone was already tying up their tee shirts and pillow cases into little cloth sculptures in order to block the dye and control the pattern. We soaked them in a bath to prepare them for dying.
There were two kinds of dying to try out:
Tom here is doing an indigo bath, which I didn't realize wasn't just dying something blue. I learned that it actually needs to oxidize in order to achieve the correct color. When placing your garment in the bucket to dye it cannot be moved because that will introduce air into the mixture and oxidize the bath. It also cannot touch the bottom because some of the chemicals will have settled to the bottom and I guess its better to leave them undisturbed.
After the garment comes out of the indigo bath we laid them out to dry on this plastic sheeting. The pieces actually came out this awesome neon green and then we WATCHED them turn blue as the air activated the indigo. HOW COOL IS THAT?! Some of us lamented that we wished we could hold on to that great green color to which Rebecca replied "Its indigo, get over it!"
Jon tried out the other kind of dying, which is your more garden variety, sleep away camp style tie dye. We had a reddish purpleish and a yellow to play around with.
While we waited for our clothes to accept the dyes the sky put on a magnificent show for us.
And one trip to the laundromat later, we were Tie Dye Champions!
Oh yeah, I cut my hair. Its actually been short for a while, and check it, there's some pink in there too.
All in all this was a most fun day of making and hanging and drinking beers- and summer's not quite over so GET ON IT!