I'm dyein' here

It's that time again.

So I've been working on making the process a little less painful.

In the past, we've tried to do it all in one afternoon. Of course that never works, there are kids who aren't there or we don't have the amount of time necessary to do it all and I end up frazzled and my knee hurts and it's a huge pain in the ass.

So over the last two days, I have either banded or assisted in banding most of the shirts and most of them have already been soaked in the soak solution and are in ziploc bags with the name of the owner on them. For the most part, all that remains is adding the dye. That's the quickest part of the entire process, so I am hopeful that I'll be able to get 90% of it done in one day.

We have several design choices, spiral, heart, stripes, chevrons, random circles, a turtle... most of the kids are pretty sure what they want. Not all of them, though. Some of them just don't quite get the idea at first. They seem to think we're drawing pictures on the shirts.

I love telling the little boys what the choices are and then having one of them think about it a moment and say, "I've decided on a light saber."

"That wasn't one of the choices."

"Hm. Okay. I'll have a Superman one."

"Again, that's not one of the choices."

"Batman?"

One of the kids who has been with me for years told me today that he wanted a scorpion on his shirt.

"Good luck with that, Buddy."

"I saw it online, you can do it."

"You saw it online? YOU can do it."

"Okay. I'll have stripes."

So first we get the right size shirt. I take one I think will work and put it up to the child's back, trying to get one that's not too short but not like a big sack, either. Today I had a kid tell me to, "Make it big, I want to wear it for five years."

Then, label the shirt with a sharpie inside the neck. When the shirt is banded, make sure the name is showing because when you take it out of the soak solution it's a real pain in the ass to try to dig through the folds and find out whose shirt it is.

So the shirts have to soak in soda ash solution until they're wet all the way through.

Then dye is applied from dye bottles. We have kids who want to dot the dye on, taking half an hour to do what should be about a 10 minute project. I have to offer guidance without making them feel bad. I encourage them to put a lot more dye on than what they've done. If they don't get enough on and I'm tired of telling them about it, I add a bit after they've gone indoors to get the next child to come dye a shirt. I want them to turn out well.

So we're gearing up. I'll try to take a picture of some of the shirts.

What was I thinking???