To relieve stress and restore sanity, I am a big believer in craft therapy. I do a lot of crafts, (as I apparently need a lot of therapy). I scrapbook, knit, cross-stitch, punch-needle and quilt. I make my own soap. I melt glass to make beads and make jewelry. I switch back and forth depending on what project is stuck in my head and won't get out until I do it.
Lately, I've been dyeing fabric in interesting ways. Non-quilters are mystified by this and always ask,"Now what are you going to do with it?", quilters understand that it is process art. The fun is in the doing. Also, we believe that there is no such thing as too much fabric.
I made good use of some snow earlier this spring to do snow-dyeing. You put snow on top of fabric and the put the dye on the snow. As it melts, it dyes the fabric. Very cool!
That was so much fun that I decided to try to dye fabric with an oatmeal resist. You cook up the oatmeal (we had some new kind of instant that the kids hated, so I used that) and spread it on the pretreated fabric.
Here my friend Palmer the visiting lab is very interested in how good the art smells. Maybe a little lick? After it dries, you spread on thickened dye. The directions said to use some special thickener, but I used cornstarch and microwaved it and it was just fine.
The red was beautiful, but reminded me a little of Bella Swan's last birthday party. I also did a nice blue. The hard part was waiting 4 hours for it to set in. Do yourself a favor and wash this off outside, with the hose. You don't want that much oatmeal going down your drain.
Look at how nice that turned out! I am very pleased and I didn't have the urge to smack the annoying people all day. Sadly, today is another day and some of them are busy pushing my buttons already. Great. Maybe I need to try sugar therapy.Here is Grandma Elly's recipe for Nutty Bars.
Nutty Bars
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine
1 cup brown sugar
Cream margarine and sugar and add:
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
Pat this mixture into a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 15-18 minutes until golden brown. Cool a bit.
Topping:
6 oz butterscotch chips
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2 Tbls Margarine
1 Tbls water
1 (12oz) can salted mixed nuts (the kind with no peanuts)
Mix chips, syrup, margarine and water in saucepan until chips are melted. Stir in nuts and spread over crust. Bake 7-8 minutes at 350. cool before cutting into small squares.
This seems awfully familiar, did I already give you this recipe? Oh, well, I told you I was nutty.
