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(picture of the POT method)
Let's go over a few methods to reset the dye. There are a few different methods you can use to reset the dye on your woolies. Read them all below and comment to let us know what method you think will work best for you. These methods work best with clean woolies.
The MICROWAVE method.
(by far the easiest method we know of!)
1. Find a glass pan or bowl that will allow your woolies space to fully immerse once filled with water. Fill the bowl with lukewarm water and 1/4 cup of white vinegar. Swoosh around to evenly disperse.
2. Put your woolies in the water and squish until the wool fully absorbs the water. This may take a few minutes. You might even want to let the wool sit in the water/vinegar mixture for 15 minutes or so to fully absorb the water.
3. After your woolies are immersed with water, make sure there is still enough water in the glass bowl/pan that your woolies are covered. Place your bowl/pan in the microwave and microwave on hot for 2 minutes. Let cool for 2 minutes. Repeat 2-3 times until the water is very hot, near boiling.
4. Let the water cool a little bit and then dump it. Your woolies may be hot to touch at this point. Bring down the temperature slowly but rinsing under warm water, then slowly reducing the temp down to cool. If your woolies rinse clear under the faucet, you will know you reset the wool correctly. Tada, you are done. Once thoroughly rinsed, the woolies are ready to be worn & dried. Or lanolized. You can use a towel folded lengthwise to roll out excess moisture and then lay them flat to dry.
The POT method (on the stovetop):
(the next easiest method)
1. Fill a large stockpot with hot water. Add 1/4 cup of white vinegar to the water. Swoosh around.
2. Immerse your woolies fully into the water. You may need to squish them into the water. They will try to wick the water away in the beginning. But eventually they will absorb the water instead. You may let them sit 15 minutes to absorb the water using this method as well.
3. Once your woolies are fully immersed in water, put your pot on the stovetop and turn the temperature on to med-high heat. Stir the wool from time to time, in a swirly motion as the temperature increases.
4. Once your water comes to a boiling point, stir the woolies for about 5 more minutes. Then, turn off the heat and when you are comfortable drain the pot carefully. The wool will be hot to touch. Rinse them under the faucet in warm water, to reduce the temperature slowly. You can then move down to cold water. At this point the woolies are set. They might have a slight vinegar smell to them for a few days. You can wash them afterward if this bothers you. Then lanolize. Otherwise, you can use your woolies right away. Lay them flat to dry.
The OVEN method:
(we suggest using the other methods first, but if this is your only option, use with care & caution. It works just fine. We use this method here in house to do our marble dye jobs!)
1. Preheat your oven to 400'F. Find a large pan that will fully immerse your woolies when filled about halfway water. Fill the pan halfway with water and add 1/4 cup of white vinegar. Squish your woolies into the water until it absorbs the water. Leave on the counter 15-30 minutes to let the wool fully absorb. After this time, if you found that your wool absorbed most of the water leaving very little in the pan, you will want to add more water. Most of your wool should be immersed. Small sections can float up and that is okay as long as you have enough water in your pan that the wool stays wet.
2. Once your oven has reached that 400'F, place your pan with woolies in the oven. You will want to be near your oven supervising to ensure this method goes smoothly. As long as there is enough water in the pan, the woolies will stay wet and all will be fine. Check them often.
3. Leave them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, giving them enough time to reach that high heat point. Supervise, supervise, supervise. Keep checking on them often. A little steam leaving the pan is fine. More than usual steam means they are already hot, you'll want to remove them from the oven.
4. After 15-20 minutes or when the woolies reach a high tempurature, remove them from the oven & drain. You might be more comfortable leaving them on the stovetop to cool before you drain too. That is fine. Do what makes you feel the most comfortable. You will use the same method as the POT dyeing to rinse the woolies. Voila, you have reset the dye!
So there you have it folks! We hope that information is helpful in keeping your woolies in tip top shape with no more bleeding dye! If you have any questions or concerns, comment below or reach out to us. We are always happy to help.
- We put on music and had dance parties. We would send an e-mail while dancing. We would cut orders while singing. We just had fun while we worked.
- We scheduled screen time around the hours we really needed it to be quiet. This one is going to vary for each family as each family has different screen time rules. For ours, we saved things like new movies or tv shows when we needed to work. We knew what types of movies would keep our kids occupied and since they would be sitting for that period of time anyways, we used that time to work. And we scheduled screen time around our work hours.
- Most of all, we set up the home for them with endless activities and we let it get a bit messy with toys and art. For the most part, they were being kids and having fun. Yes, we had to break up a ton of fights. We also had to constantly re-direct. But, sometimes we just had to stop for a minute, put down what we were doing and be with our children. We worked with nursing babies attached. We wore our children on our back using an Ergo baby carrier when they wanted to be close. We talked to them while we worked. A lot of the time, they really wanted to be a part of the business. They wanted to be near us. They wanted to work. Just like mom. So we thought it would be fun to purchase them toy sewing machines, made them cardboard rotary cutters, gave them fabric. They sat down and worked for hours. Stopping to show us their proud creations.
I hope some of those examples set you up for success in the coming weeks. Some of the examples were fairly specific to my career. So it might take some creativity to make those work for your family and your careers. Just remember to be flexible, expect interruptions and love on your children extra hard right now. They aren't used to this either. Give grace. Most of all to yourself. But also to your children.
If you are struggling with something in particular that you'd like me to talk about, get in touch with me and let me know. Or on the contrary, if you have also been a work from home parent for a while and have tips we can add to the list, we'd love to hear those too. You can post in the comments below or shoot us an e-mail me at hello@rainbow-waters.com. We will update this post as we go.
Love & Peace.
Stay sane, friends.
Lovingly,
Lindsay
(a work at home mom who's been trying to keep her sanity for 15 years!)
In light of the recent events with covid-19, we are doing what we can and have stocked our shop with our reusable wipes. These are made from the softest bamboo/organic cotton fibers. Each wipe is 2 layers thick backed in plushy heavy organic bamboo fleece, topped in smooth & sleek organic bamboo velour. These babies are super absorbent and so comfortable against the skin.
While these wipes were originally created with cloth diapering in mind, as our own children grew, we found a multitude of other ways to use these wipes in our own home. Some of my personal favorite ways to use these wipes are:
1. Washing our face at the end of the day. I use the plushy fleece side to scrub off dirt & leftover makeup. I then use the sleek velour side to rinse off soap and clean my face.
2. Used as a washcloth in the bath or shower, they will absorb moisture well & give you a great lather when scrubbing soap on the plushy fleece side of the wipe.
3. Toilet paper! Sounds crazy, but in the event I have ran out of toilet paper, these do the trick real well. For an even better clean, wet them under the faucet for a few seconds with warm water. So fresh!
4. These are great for cleaning up sticky hands & faces. Wet them with warm water and voila!
But what I love the most about these wipes is how great they are for our planet- mother earth. They can be reused over and over & will last decades. Throw them in with your regular laundry- washed at any temperature and dry on regular heat. If soiled, throw them in with towels or cloth diapers. Easy peasy, lemon squeezie!
We hope that your family stays healthy during this time and we are sending all of our love your way. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if we can help you in anyway.
Love you guys,
~Lindsay
Ohhhh eemm geeee!!!
Gosh we love those spring colors here! We used mint, orchid, submarine & eggplant wool colors for this one. So adorable!
But, seriously with those puffy little legs. I'm dying here!
Let's look closer at the new raglan peplum with flutter sleeves! We made some adjustments to our raglan pattern and added the little flouncy skirt & ruffle sleeves. I just can't with those sleeves! This print is an organic cotton spendex blend that we snagged from talented designer Ella over at Wolf & Rabbit Fabrics. It's love.
Grab the peplum right here and the cute little wool bloomers here for the complete set!
This morning a customer asked me how much liquid our RW limited edition Beanpop Diapers hold. Perplexed I asked for more information about how she does her experimentation and then I set forth to do my own. Here is what I found. Keep in mind that the diaper fabric has been pre-washed several times before sewing. But the diapers do still need to be washed 4-5 times before they are fully prepped and ready for the heaviest flow they can handle. I did my experiment brand new. If you do this experiment after 4-5 washes. I think you will find that your diapers are able to hold even more liquid.
Here are some facts you might want to know before we get started. Beanpop Cloth Diapers are made using organic bamboo fleece & a little bamboo velour. Both of the materials do also have some organic cotton in the material. Likely for stability. The fleece is 400gsm. GSM is the weight of the material. It stands for grams per square meter. 400gsm is considered pretty heavy weight.
Needed for this experiment-
A cloth diaper
A kitchen scale
Water
Somewhere to hang your cloth diaper.
Step 1: To start the experiment, I first weighed my cloth diaper while dry. A Beanpop Cloth Diaper weighs approximately 7.28oz when fully dry.
Step 2: I put my diaper into the sink and turned the faucet on full blast. I let the water fill to the brim and I fully saturated the diaper. I also let it sit with the water flowing over it for several minutes. I mean it was sopping wet.
Step 3: I used a little basket to carry my sopping wet diaper outside. I hung my diaper on my line outside and I waited for the diaper to stop dripping. This didn't take long. Perhaps 10 minutes.
Step 4: When the diaper slowed down and stopped dripping, I pulled it off the line. I put it on my packaging scale. You can use any kitchen scale. It now weighed 23.88 oz.
Step 5: I used my fancy grammar school math skills and I subtracted 7.28oz from the total weight of the wet diaper (23.88oz). I got 16.6 oz. I hung my diaper back on the line to dry fully.
My results: So there you have, folks. A brand new Beanpop diaper will hold approximately 16.6oz of liquid, that has the same consistency as water. That is the size of a medium size plastic bottle of water. This diaper is also holding more than twice it's weight in liquid. Which is pretty incredible!
What could change the results? Like I said, I did this experiment with a brand new diaper. Once your Beanpop diaper has been through the washer & dryer 4-5 times, the plushy side of the material tends to get really nice & fluffy (hence- fluffymail!). When this happens, it creates little pockets within the tiny hairs that will absorb water and hold onto it even more. So I think this diaper would hold quite a bit more ounces of liquid after the diaper is fully prepped.
Perhaps the type of water that is running through your house matters. And lastly, while urine is mostly water, it doesn't have quite the same properties as water so your diaper may hold more or less urine. That I do not know.
My take: With a proper wool cover, this cloth diaper will hold a lot of pee! (cough- you know where to find your woolies!) It is most likely nighttime worthy. As your child reaches over 1.5 years of age, you may need to fold the snake soaker in the spot where your child wets the most. For boys, that is usually the front. For girls that would be in the bottom of the crotch. If you find that you are needing just a little extra boost at night, let us know and we are happy to sew up a nighttime doubler that you can lay inside the diaper for your super soaker children. We will send you an invoice for $10 for your doubler.
To grab yourself a Beanpop Cloth Diaper to try out yourself, click here:
https://rainbow-waters.com/collections/cloth-diapers
I'd love to hear your thoughts, if anyone else has done experiments of their own.
Update to my results: My partner pointed out that the diaper holds 16.6oz of liquid in weight, but this does not necessarily translate to 16.6 measurable fluid ounces of our tap water. So naturally, I weighed an ounce of water. One measurable ounce of my tap water weighs approximately .94 ounces. So the diaper held closer to 17.65 measurable fluid ounces. Here is a photo of me holding approximately 17.65oz of water in my hand. Holy moly, that diaper packs some punch!
So let's talk about this sweater. When I set forth to choose new pieces to add to our new women's collection, I think about 4 things: comfort, fit, quality, and style. Comfort always comes first for me. I am a comfort junkie! If it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it. So this has to be first! This Victoria sweater is made from the most gorgeously soft merino wool blend. More specifically, we are using our 97% organic wool 3% lycra merino wool interlock. I am super sensitive to fibers and sometimes even the softest wool feels itchy against my skin. But this stuff, it's just not! Even after a long day of wear. Merino is the softest of wool types and this material just blows things out of the water as far as comfort goes. Wool also regulates your body temperature keeping you warm when it's cold. It is also breathes very well and cools you down when it warms up. I wore my sweater for a normal San Diego winter day, where we fluctuated from 40's in the early mornings to nearly 70's when the warm sun hit mid-day. I was comfortable all day long.
Equipped with bishop sleeves that give you a little swoosh when you move. The sweater has the cutest fit and may be ordered at regular or cropped length. You may also order this sweater with or without the bottom band. You can see that I chose mine cropped with a banded bottom. I have a pear shaped body. So this style fits right above my hips showing off my natural curves.
(gorgeous close up of the bishop sleeves)
How do I choose the best fit for my Victoria Sweater? When choosing sizing, you will need a soft measuring tape. Measurements are usually more accurate when taken by somebody else. But in a pinch, you can measure yourself. You will want to take 3 measurements: waist, hips & length.
Bust: Take your bust measurement's while wearing all undergarments. Wrap the measuring tape around the widest part of your bust. Trimly, without squeezing the tape.Hello everyone,
This year we will be offering our Black Friday sale to our newsletter subscribers only! Emails will be sent out on Wednesday at 4:30pm so make sure that you are signed up for the newsletter before then and check your spam folder if you don't receive it. You can join the newsletter by going to our website here. There is a link right below the slideshow where you can input your email address. Make sure to go to your email afterward and verify your subscription. That's all there is to it!
This newsletter won't just have an exclusive discount code + a couple other promotions. It will also have a recap on everything that we did here at Rainbow Waters in November. It will be the first monthly newsletter of many. Juri & I decided last week that it would be fun to give you a recap at the end of every month sharing the new products we've listed, exclusive sales to subscribers + more.
We know in supporting our small business, you are interested in how things run behind the scenes, how we create & offer designs & how Rainbow Waters fits into our daily lives. We are committed to sharing those details as time allows. It is fun for us to share too!
We look forward to sending our first newsletter out. Let us know what you think! And as always, if you have any questions about our small business or our products, get in touch or comment below.
Have a happy Tuesday,
Lindsay
p.p.s. If you are enjoying seeing these new featured artists on my page or you know of an artist that you'd love to see featured here, please reach out and let us know by commenting below or connecting with us on social media.
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p.p.s. Hold up! Here's all that fine print stuff too. I know, it's boring. But we have to do it.
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