"Dying" Adventure

How I spent my Saturday: 13 colors, 232 shirts. And a 1/2 marathon

My sister came over to my neck of the woods last weekend. She doesn't get over here very often, but when I left her a very sad, begging message a few weeks back, she agreed to take a little road trip.

What was it that motivated her and a friend to drive 6 hours? Well, the promise of a weekend full of tie dying of course. My sister is a tie dying guru and I had never tie dyed anything--until this weekend. So when I decided that for 8th Grade Celebration Day, I was going to tie dye 232 white t-shirts, I knew my sister was the woman to call.

So Friday I took the day off of work to begin twisting and rubberbanding the t-shirts. My sister, nephew, and sister's friend arrived Friday late afternoon and we continued working until 11 o'clock Friday night.

(The boxes of t-shirts waiting to be twisted)

I woke up 4:30 Saturday morning to get ready for my 1/2 marathon--I will not be telling you any more about this run except that it sucked! And I went to the urgent care today (Monday) to get 2 liters of fluids because I was still dehydrated. Anyway, after the 1/2, we moved all of the t-shirts and dying stuff out to my parents house and set to work.

Did you know that tie-dying is a very involved process? Soaking in a "fixer", then rinsing, then squirting on dye, then more rinsing after the dye has set for at least 4 hours, then washing and drying? Holy cow! I finally had to stop at 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning because I couldn't take it anymore. By that time we had completed the whole process for about half of the shirts.

(Did you notice my sister and I were both wearing tie dye t-shirts? Funny. Please excuse this picture of me. It was taken at 12:30 a.m.)

My sister and her friend finished up the shirts while I was at church on Sunday. I was so glad she came.