American Girl Goes Camping

No, not me. A doll.

For some reason I have received the American Girl catalog for several years. As the mother of a boy who deplores all things girly, I used to flip through the catalogs wistfully, sigh, and throw them away.

A few days after Anna was born I received another American Girl catalog in the mail and devoured it with glee. I finally had a reason to look!

As usual, I skimmed over the "modern" dolls at the front of the catalog. I have no use for those. The history geek in me expressed interest only in the "historical" dolls. Imagine my dismay when I saw that the doll I had always wanted to get for my hypothetical daughter had been discontinued just a few months prior (Samantha, from the turn of the last century). A newcomer, Kit, from the Great Depression looked promising. I just needed to sit back and wait for my daughter to age about seven years.

Another American Girl catalog arrived today. I almost threw it into the recycling without looking at it since the historical dolls really don't change that much and since Anna is still only 15 months old. Steve was washing the kitchen floor, though, so I couldn't get to the recycling bin. I sat down and for once a modern doll--their "Girl of the Year"--caught my attention.

Her name is Lanie. She's cute. Blonde. Has the same inexplicable buck teeth as all the other American Girls. Likes nature. Has a pet bunny. And...

...she has her very own camper!

It has a shower, a pull-down bed, a sleeping bag, play food, and stickers so you can decorate the interior and exterior!

I decided that I had to get it for Anna. I could put it away for a year or two or eight until she was old enough.

Then I saw that it costs $295 and weighs 43 pounds, and I decided it could probably wait. If I can't find it a few years from now, I can always buy it off ebay...or maybe make one out of cardboard.

Playsilks

This is only tangentially related to the RV, but it's close enough (and cool enough) that I had to share.

If you have young kids you might be familiar with playsilks. If not, they're basically squares or rectangles of silk, dyed in fun colors, that kids can use for pretty much anything: a cape, a mask, a doll blanket, scenery for a car race, whatever.

I had wanted to buy some for Elias for years, but I figured he'd find them too foofy (he's like that sometimes). Plus, they're expensive: $10-15 each, plus shipping. I figured I'd get some for Anna someday, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Well, I was at a store with some friends the other day, and they had playsilks, so I decided I'd give 'em a try. Elias had been running around the house with a 4-foot length of satin ribbon lately, so maybe he'd be more amenable to them. I forked out $13 for one, $15 for the other (plus tax), and brought them home.

The good news was that the kids loved them! And what better toy to take with us in the RV than one that weighs next to nothing and takes up almost no room? The bad news was that buying more would cost a fortune.

Then I remembered having read about dying your own silk with Kool-Aid, so I looked into it. A quick google search of "playsilks kool-aid" brings up dozens of methods. I decided I had to give it a go! I ordered 9 silks of varying sizes for $2-$4 each from Dharma Trading Company (plus they threw in a 10th as a free gift).

All I had left to do was get some Kool-Aid. The kids and I had an early dinner the other night, so I decided to walk up to the store to get some dessert. Elias wanted a Hershey bar, and I wanted a slice of peach pie. They didn't have slices, though--only full pies. But it was my lucky day! Generic Kool-Aid ("Drink Mix") was on sale for 15 cents! Since I'd need a few packets for each silk, I loaded up. Then I got to the check-out counter, looked at my order of a candy bar, a pie, and 30 packets of Kool-Aid, and felt like Mom of the Year.

Anyway, the silks came and I got going. I'm not big on accuracy, so I read over some of the various instructions from other people's blogs, then decided to wing it.

I filled my large stock pot with hot tap water and a glug of white vinegar, then threw in the scarves to soak for a bit. In the meantime, I collected a few large plastic bowls with lids, got my Kool-Aid and Drink Mix organized, and started my first batch.

I put some hot water, another glug of vinegar, and two or three packets of Cherry Kool-Aid into one of the bowls and mixed it up. I then selected a scarf, threw it in, and mixed it around a little with a spoon. Next step: lid on and into the microwave for three minutes. (Yes, I realize whatever toxicity I avoided by using food-grade dyes I probably added back in by microwaving in plastic, but I don't really care as long as they don't get ingested.)

While the first batch was in the microwave, I mixed up the second, and so on. When a scarf came out of the microwave I'd stir it around a little. If there was still a lot of dye left in the bowl (in other words, it hadn't been absorbed) I might put it back in for another couple minutes. Or not. It just depended on how they looked.

Once all my bowls were used up, I started rinsing out the scarves to free up the bowls for others. Some of the colors rinsed out really easily. Some (ahem, RED!) still bled even after 10 minutes of rinsing. After a quick wash in the machine and even more rinsing, they still bled, but not enough that I cared anymore.

I hung them outside to dry, then let the kids play. Well, Anna played. Elias was busy with other stuff.

I have to say that they turned out really well. They're a bit mottled, but I think it makes them look nice. Gives them some character. If I had dyed them on the stove and kept them constantly moving they would have been more uniform, but I don't have the time or patience for that.

If anyone cares to try, here are my observations on the different colors: Red is hard. I tried two different reds (one Cherry Kool-Aid, one Black Cherry Drink Mix). They both started out vibrant, but once I rinsed out enough dye that they wouldn't bleed all over everything, they were much more muted. The Cherry is now more of a pastel red, if that makes sense. The Black Cherry, which had started out burgundy, is now a dusty mauve. It's actually quite lovely, just much lighter than it had been before.

The pink and yellow (Pink Lemonade and regular Lemonade Drink Mix) hardly bled at all. The pink probably came out the most uniform of all the colors. The Orange Kool-Aid produced my favorite color, but it was also the most mottled. That's probably my fault, though.

I couldn't find any blue Kool-Aid so I tried food coloring to make blue and teal. (The blue was a big squirt of blue. Teal was about 15 drops of blue and 2 of yellow.) The food coloring worked very nicely and rinsed clear immediately. It made me wonder if red food coloring would work better than red Kool-Aid.

Food coloring would also give my nose a break. The dried scarves don't have a scent, but making them was a fragrant process. The whole house smelled like a jellybean factory for several hours, and Elias kept asking for gummies. The scent was fun at first, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly. I think I might have also developed Kool-Aid lung from inhaling the powder. But these are the sacrifices I make for my children.

(Anna playing peek-a-boo with her Grape Drink Mix silk.)