Last weekend as Sevda and I sat on the dock, watching the kids splash around in the lake, our thoughts turned to long summer days spent at camp and later, making kids do camp-like activities of our own.  I asked her if she'd ever tie-dyed anything, thinking it would be a fun activity for me and the kids to do.  "Oh yes," she told me, "We'd tie-dye everything that the campers brought with them that was white.  It's EASY.  Parents hated it."

Inspired, the kids and I picked out a few white items at the store, a bag of rubber bands, and a bottle of rit dye.  I followed Sevda's basic instructions - "twist part of the shirt, tie it up, twist it some more, then dye it."  The kids thought it was kind of a dumb project at first, acting like I was tricking them into doing laundry and just calling it "fun".  "Just put that rubber band on here" I'd tell them, holding a bundle of twisted up fabric.


The actual dying instructions went something like this:
1. I brought a pot of boiling water out onto the patio and they became somewhat more interested. 
2. I let Sophie dump some salt in the pot and stir it up.  I have no idea what this does, it just said something vague on the dye bottle about adding salt to the water. 
3.  Then, I poured in half of the bottle of dye and I told the kids it was vampire blood.  
Note 1: I did not use as much water as the dye instructions called for because I was lazy and didn't feel like measuring 3 gallons of water, or finding a pot to contain it.
Note 2: It wasn't REALLY vampire blood, but it did catch their interest.
4.  We placed the knotted up shirts in the pot and I let them stir it occasionally with a spatula.
5.  Instead of waiting for the 30-60 minutes described on the dye label, we contained ourselves for probably 10 minutes when we decided that we'd had enough waiting.  We poured the dye on the grass and let the hose run into the pot until the water was less blood-like and more like slightly pinkish water.  We pulled off all the rubberbands and spread our treasures on the grass to dry in the sun.  The directions didn't say to do this, it just felt like curing them in the sun would be the camp kind of thing to do.


It was about this time that Marty wandered into the yard and asked what we were doing.  Martin, now loving the project, said that we'd made up some new shirts and did he want one?  He said that he had a sport coat that he thought would be perfect, asked me if I wanted him to go rev up the VW bus, put his arm around Martin and asked him if he'd ever heard of the Grateful Dead, then walked away laughing.

Laugh it up buddy, we're inspired, and this is our new uniform.  Welcome to Camp Nelson.  Better keep a sharp eye on your underwear.