Tie-Dyed Jello Skeins, Anyone?

Well, tonight I was really needing to do something "artsy-fartsy"/"creative" with my time. I knew I wanted to try some more dyeing with a couple of undyed skeins I spun. But, what to do, what to do...

J-E-L-L-O!

Of course I have Jello packages in my pantry dating back two centuries. I am obviously not using them for human consumption. The only logical solution for using them is to try a tye-dyeing experiment with three of the colours. 'Cause God knows if I use anymore Kool-Aid packets (which were bought solely for the purpose of dying my wool...duh!), my family will revolt and there will be mutiny and carnage like the world has never known! Ergo, I knew if I used three of the three hundred packages of Jello sitting in the pantry, nobody would be none the wiser!!!

Once my hubby was busy in another room and my daughter was having her nightly shower, I quietly snuck to the pantry. With the Mission Impossible theme song running through my head, I stealthily approached the cupboard. Peeking down the hall, I knew I had mere minutes to complete the mission, should I choose to accept it. With particular colours in mind, I quickly shuffled through the flavour selections, until I found the necessary items. Retrieval without setting off the alarms was key. I selected the following flavours: Strawberry/Banana, Fruit Fiesta, and Orange.

I quickly mixed the red and green colours in two separate containers and placed the ends of the two selected skeins and thus began the dyeing treatment. My heightened senses kept me informed as to the presence of family down the hall. As long as I could hear the shower and radio running, I knew my daughter would be occupied.

Soon I was ready to continue with...the magic! I switched the tips of the ends that had been soaking into the opposite colour (to give me a hint of some kind of browns). I also then put the undyed portion into the orange. It was ethereal to see the colours begin to intermingle with one another taking the skeins from creamy white and pale grey to a display of colours that would make even the angels weep as the glory of the skeins shone around them. I think I even began to hear the heavenly chorus rejoicing at the beauty before me.

"Yum," said my daughter standing behind me...dripping wet all over the kitchen floor. "Something smells like Jello!" I quickly looked up...like a startled deer. Alas, one more stealthy than I had outwitted me! I had been caught "having fun" without my daughter. I paused waiting for a cry of dispair from my daughter that I didn't wait for her before playing with the colours. But, there was nothing. In fact she peered into the kitchen sink where "the magic" was happening. "Hmmm...cool," was her response before skipping down the hall to find something more interesting to do.

But I didn't care. After the soak, I placed the skeins into a roaster and put it in the oven for about 20 mins. The hardest part was waiting for them to cool down enough to rinse them, dry them in my towel, and hang them to dry. But not before taking pictures. By this time, I was rather excited and in fact dragged my hubby to see this creation of such loverliness, I thought he would weep from being in the presence of such beauty.

"Hmmm...neat." (Note sound of a record needle scraping across a vinyl record...)

Neat. That was it. There was no weeping. There was no lifting up of one's eyes to the heavens above with shouts of alleluias (well, I suppose it is Lent).

But you know what? I didn't care. I heard the angels. And they were rejoicing!

P.S. I'll have pictures of the skeins tomorrow when the sun comes up. I tried to take some tonight, but the lighting in our kitchen is too yellow, so the colours didn't show in the piccys very well. Until tomorrow, my pets...until tomorrow!