An impulse buy pays off.

by threegirlpileup

Okay, I admit it.  I’m a bit of a sucker for an enticing craft kit.  Which is maybe a little strange, given my love of free-form, open-ended crafting.  There’s just something about having a package that has all the parts that you need to make something fun–no gathering required.  No thinking required!  With any luck, it’s instant fun in a box.

Of course, sometimes this works better than others.  Because the kids and I are used to working with good quality materials, sometimes what we find in a kit is disappointing or frustrating to work with.  Or kits can often be stingy with the quantity of supplies.

So anyway, when I was in JoAnn Fabrics right before we left for our trip, there was a huge wall of craft kit-lets (the kind designed for summer camps) on sale for half off.  Now, if a craft kit is hard to resist, a craft kit on clearance is nearly impossible.  So I meandered over to see what was there.  Most of it was pretty unappealing–lots of foam projects.  But there were a few goodies, including a tie-dye kit which caught my eye.  I picked up this and a couple of other things to pull out when we’re having a lull in NY and a project seems like the thing we need.

We’ve been having unusually hot weather, which means that we really don’t want to spend much of the day inside.  Not having air-conditioning, the inside spaces get pretty steamy.  This means I’ve been knitting on the deck instead of sewing inside, and it also means that it’s good to have some outside projects for the girls.  Tie-dyeing seemed like just the thing.

And it was.  We’ve done this a number of times at home, but this is the first time that (by necessity) we did it outside.  Um, why didn’t I think of this before?  Squirt bottles of dye out on the grass (instead of anywhere inside the house) makes for a much more relaxed mama.  And thus much more fun is had by all.

One great thing about this kit was that it came with a combination of pre-mixed colors (green, turquoise, blue, purple, pink) that created only minimal opportunities for making brown.

All-in-all, a very satisfying project.  I would say out of the whole endeavor, only two of the dyed pieces were less than really pleasing, which is a pretty good outcome in my experience.

And of course, we got the added bonus of getting to see our creations hanging on the clothesline!