as promised - a post about my adventures with some fabric and some condy's crystals

Hi All,
(if one can call the one or 2 people who might actually ever read this "all" LOL)

I was posting a reply to a fabric dying yahoogroup ... a very quiet fabric dying yahoogroup ... lol ... when I remembered I had not posted here for a while, and the reason I started up this blog was to put this stuff here ... and I also did promise, last time I posted, that I would post about this "in the next day or 5" ... oops - it is a couple days longer than 5 actually - oh well "better late than never"? LOL
so ... here is what I just sent to that poor quiet little fabric dyeing list ... (except that the X had the name of the new member, who the original message was to/about)

----- Original Message -----

> This list is not very active, in fact not active at all at the moment,


... in fact it has been so quiet I had forgotten about it! LOL

Welcome X (and anyone else who has joined while I wasn't looking ) ... and Hi All ...

The funny thing is ... I actually DID some dyeing recently ... in the last few days actually ... that if if you call messing around with fabric and condy's crystals (potassium permanganate) "dyeing" ... I am not even sure potassium permanganate even IS a dye technically ... but it makes the fabric change colour .
My "potassium permanganate" experiments started with a passing mention, from Mum (who was down visiting for a weekend about 2 weeks ago), about how "you know how you dye silk and put salt crystals on it - well you can also try putting condy's crystals on fabric, but don't leave them on too long or you get holes" ... or something like that ... the subject kind of changed and I forgot to ask about it again ... we were probably too busy messing around with some other fabric that I had dipped in silver nitrate (I try all sorts of odd things - the silver nitrate thing was someting I had done once before, and I just happened to have a little bit left over from a science lesson at the school I work at - so I saved it because I knew Mum was coming down and I knew she would have fun watching it go brown in the sun ... it goes brown on skin too - it actually dries out/burns so that is probably one of those "don't try this at home" things ... )
anyway ... with the condy's crystals ... that makes your skin brown too (I had a brown "pinky" finger for a day or 2 because I had a hole in that finger of the rubber glove ) ... I wet a bit of fabric then I sprinkled on some crystals and thought "oh what a pretty purple/pink" ... then I and rolled it up and shook it and stuff - so the colour spread around a bit more ... then I rinsed it ... and it went brown ... LOL
... actually it was a pleasant surprise ... (not that I should have been surprised ... I am sure I already knew it stained fingers and stuff brown ) ... it was a nice effect ... and some bits kind of looked a bit like sand ... and I thought "hmmm - I need some sand fabric" (for a quilt I am planning to make) ... so (a day or 2 later when I had some more condy's crystals) I got another bit of fabric and wet it and spread it out on the back lawn and got a bit of stocking and shook a heap of fine crystals all over the fabric - and after it was rinsed - I had my "sand" . Oh - and I also had a bit of fun doing some sort of tie dyeing too - when I did the "sand" and another bit of fabric, I gave them the first rinse in a very little bit of water in an old ice cream container (one that lives in the laundry and won't get used for food/etc again - is not good practice to use the same utensils for food and for science experiments ) ... then, later, I used that pretty pink "water" to dunk my tied up bit of fabric ... it came out pale, but interesting effect . (the hardest part of all that was finding somewhere to hide that container of pink stuff, where the dog, who just had to watch and help with everything I was doing , wouldn't try and drink it! LOL).

hmmm ... I have some more spare white fabric, and some condy's crystals left ... and it is still daylight outside ... maybe I should try another experiment? LOL ... I was just wondering, as I typed part of this e-mail, what ELSE I could do with condy's crystals ... and thought ... "pity it isn't sun activated or I could do leaves and stuff ... " then I thought "hmmm ... I could use leaves/etc as stencils and spray the stuff on!" ... then I got to thinking about how strong a solution I might need and if it would work better on dry fabric ... and now I want to experiment ... LOL
... all I need is a spray bottle ... I have one somewhere ... 2 actually ... but I only know where 1 is ... and I can't use that one because that is the one I use to spray water on my stick insects (yes - I have pet stick insects ) and I am not sure what it would do to them if I used the same spray bottle for them after it had been used for potassium permanganate.

eek ... this has turned into rather a long rave about who knows what!
(I think I might have to copy this lot onto my blog - yes- I have one of those too - but I haven't put anything on there for a week or 2 ... )
Is this post long enough? ... got enough to read now?
(I know - u are all probably glad I don't post very often, and/or wishing I had stayed quiet ... LOL)

Andrea Carew,
disorganised in Dunlop (a suburb of Canberra)
... heading off to copy most of this into a post to my blog (especialy seeing I just noticed that when I posted there about a week ago, I mentioned that I would tell a story about my adventures with condy's crystals ), and then I might go find that other spray bottle .
(hmmm ... I might need to find some nice leaves or something to use as stencils too ... and I might have to hunt around for that spare fabric because I am not sure where I put that either ... aaaahhhrrrggghhh)

btw ... anyone want to borrow my nose for a day or so (just until it stops running ... I seem to have caught a cold and all the sneezing and snorting is driving me nuts ... lol)

Hmmm ... I can't sign of with "goodnight" either - because it is still DAY time ... LOL
(and yes - I do have a kid beside me, who wants me to finish this so he can steal the keyboard ... the online game he is playing doesn't work as well on the laptop as it does on here ... but my e-mail is on this computer and I came in here to actually have a look at some of it ... lol)