A new beginning- The "Adventure!" shirt!

So, I've had this blog for a while, but I have never really had a reason to have it. That may or may not be changing. But, I've decided that for now I want to use it to kind of track my creative efforts, starting with something that I made a little while ago, but of which I am pretty proud.

My ADVENTURE! shirt.

I made this shirt a P-day in my mission. Well, okay, so I actually did little parts of it over a few P-days. Let me explain.

People eat of a lot of bananas and plantains in the DR, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

(Bonus points if you catch the literary reference.)

Anyway, now that that is established, you will understand that I learned a little bit about them during my time there. And let me tell you, the most important thing that you can know is that they can be eaten both green and ripe. Slightly less important is that they can be eaten raw (if ripe), boiled, and fried. The third most important thing is that you can not boil or fry ripe bananas. It just doesn't work. And just a little bit behind that in importance is what is really important for this story. When you peel green bananas and plantains you have to be careful, because the skins are full of a sap that stains your clothes. And that isn't even the best part! The sap is transparent. Until you wash your clothes. Then you have a nice rust color on your clothes.

So, you always have to be on the look out, so that you don't stain your clothes.

Well, one day I had what I thought was a genius idea. A stain is really just another name for a dye, right? I mean, when you dye clothes, you are just staining the whole thing to be a different color. So, I had the crazy idea of dying a T-shirt with banana sap. Thankfully, at this moment we lived in a house with a big backyard that had several banana plants. So, I got a plain white T-shirt, cut some leafs off of the plants, and squeezed the juice out of them. I had to do it by hand, which was a little bit rough, but I was determined! Oh, and I found this frog.

So, I eventually ended up with a shirt that was apparently soaked with banana sap, then I hung it up to dry. And then, as the stain doesn't really show up until you wash it, I washed it. (Surprising, I know. ;D ) But, everything didn't turn out quite how I had hoped. The color wasn't very even, and so the shirt looked more like it was dirty than dyed. So, I had to think some more.

Well, thankfully I had a big plastic sheet left over from another project. (Maybe I'll write about it next time.) So I carefully wrote the word "ADVENTURE!" on it, and cut it out with my pocket knife. Then I mixed up a chlorine solution and sprayed it onto the shirt using an empty bug repellent bottle. Then, when it had reached about the color that I wanted, I dunked it into a bucket of water to stop it.

And so came to be my "ADVENTURE!" shirt.

And who knows. Maybe one day you will be lucky enough to see me wear it. ;D