Shipwreck Optional

John and I are hosting our next mother/son book club meeting which I realized, alarmingly, is this coming weekend!  We have not even finished the book yet, let alone plan activities, questions, and menu. 

So, as I'm using store-bought dye to color an old sheet before making it into camping dish towels, I think of a theme throughout the book we're reading, The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.  Throughout the book, Attean, a Native American boy,  thinks Matt, a pioneer boy, goes through way too much trouble for things that can easily be made from the earth around them.  While reading Robinson Crusoe together, Matt thinks it awesome that Crusoe finds (in a shipwreck) bags of nails, barrels of bullets, a dozen hatchets, and even a hammock.  Attean, on the other hand, sees no use for such things.

Out of curiousity, and having no idea what I'm doing, I took a cup of frozen blueberries out of the freezer, added a little water, and a piece of white printed fabric.  The little piece up on the right is the blueberry dye while the brown strupe is the store-bought.  With a little more knowledge, I think they'd be pretty comparable!

Neither Attean or Matt would probably have much need for dying their dishtowels but these are the fun ideas that run through a reader's mind as we read good books.