Amazing Aunts! Creative Customers!

I posted a few new colorways today, one of which is called “Aunt Dot.” Although I do manage to write more detailed listings than most, I try not to ramble too much on Etsy but my blog is the perfect venue for a wee bit of backstory.

She’s my great-aunt actually, my Grandma’s sister and the youngest of 12.  I named my daughter after another one of her sisters, my aunt Violet.  Aunt Dot and Violet are peachy keen in my book. Aunt Dot looks quite a bit like my Grandma, who died of cancer when I was 20.  Red hair, green eyes, petite and shapely, strong and always productive.  Like all of the sisters in that family (there were originally 9), she is outspoken and fiery. Irish.

She lives on a 40 acre homestead across from the 150+ acre farm on which she was raised,  on top of Signal Mountain in Tennessee.  Aunt Dot has a large rambler style house built by her husband who was a brick mason, a huge yard dotted with oaks, a dozen cattle, barn, creek, chickens…There are muscadine grapes, many berry varieties, fruit trees, and probably a half acre in annual garden space.  Since it’s Tennessee, they can grow all manner of plants that seem downright exotic to those of us from the colder northern regions; okra, yams, and peanuts are among the many I long to cultivate.  Aunt Violet has a house about 35 minutes away in Chattanooga but she has always spent part of her week at her sister’s place.  They run the tiller by themselves, do all of the gardening, food preservation, lawn care, landscaping, animal husbandry…  They put up cases and cases of canned goods and always seem to be busy cleaning, making, doing.  Aunt Dot also happens to be a dandy of a wine maker. A few years ago, I visited after she’s undergone a hip replacement.  I asked about the wine making and she said “Oh honey, you know I had my hip replaced and I just haven’t done hardly much atall with the wine this year, nothing hardly atall.” I peeked in the garage and counted approximately 50 five gallon carboys of wine!  Yeah, hardly much indeed.  She drinks a glass after supper,  gives the wine away as gifts, probably trades it, and I suspect a bit of moonshine here and there.  Actually, one of my favorite Aunt Dot stories starts out with some of her moonshine (the making of which she credits to her “neighbor”).

We were visiting about 5 years ago and both of my Aunts (who were in their mid seventies) were all a-flutter because there was some Victoria Secret fashion show on that evening.  The spoke of it all day, made sure to speed us through supper and even called Aunt Violet’s husband and other kin to remind them to turn on the television. Aunt Dot offered us wine or moonshine (disapproving glance from Aunt Violet who doesn’t drink), and I chose moonshine–she poured about three fingers in a small jelly jar. During that period, Robert and I were in a fairly heavy drinking phase as we performed weekly with our bands or burlesque troupe at bars or clubs–sufficed to say, I felt my tolerance to be quite high at the time.  The program began, and I can honestly say that I was shocked. We haven’t had television since 1994, and although I’d certainly caught a show here or there, I hadn’t realized that thongs were acceptable on major network channels.  Aunt Dot and Violet were mesmerized. I slowly sipped my ever-so-smooth jelly glass of moonshine and attempted to rise after drinking about a half inch of the clear liquid, finding that I could barely move my legs. I sat in silence for the rest of the program, until the last sexpot sashayed down the runway. My Aunt Dot sighed, turned to her 77 year old sister and said “Violet, we were born too soon.”

Dang. I love those women.  This colorway is for Aunt Dot, who loves orange and brown.

I am getting ready to go to ELAW, the environmental law conference held at U of O in Eugene (www.pielc.org). Willow and I attend every year and I’m looking forward to it.  I have quite a few adventures planned for this year-mostly working vacations but I’m of the mind that those are the best sort of vacations.  I’m not exactly the lying on a beach type.  Good grief, the very idea of that makes me tense.   I am in the process of putting together a list of events, festivals, fairs, and conferences for 2012 and will post it soon.

I also want to learn more about what my customers create with Yarnarchy products!  I don’t have time to make much out of my own yarn, and I must live vicariously through my delightful customers.  If you email a Yarnarchy project photo to me, I will send you a coupon code for 10% off of your next order.  Here are some project photos I have received:

Cassie’s great Slouch Hat

Kathryn’s iPad cover. Not having an iPad, I hadn’t even considered such a thing but I love this!

Brenda Bush Photography on Etsy sent me a photo of a darling baby hat:

Molly Jones from Ravelry made this doll!

She also made this hat:

Melanie2 from Ravelry made this mitts:

And this headband for her daughter:

Elfguts on Ravelry and Etsy made this hat:

And this pullover:

And Julie from FeeVertelaine on Etsy makes wonderful dolls too! Her shop is at http://www.etsy.com/shop/FeeVertelaine, but here’s a doll she made with some of my yarn last summer:

I love my customers!  They never cease to amaze me! Such creativity…it’s an honor to create supplies for their creative endeavors.

Wait! One more thing! To cure your winter blues, to encourage the coming of spring, and in celebration of all things Irish (St. Patrick’s Day on the 17^th and my own birthday on the 19^th!), I will offer a fantastic March sale. All of my green toned colorways will be offered at 10% off the normal price for the entire month of March.

Hermione is my hero?

“Over Achiever Syndrome is serious, and can lead to emotional and physical burnout, and in extreme cases, early death.”  Being a DIY hypochondriac, I sort of like that quote because it implies that being an overachiever can result in real, physical problems.  Everyone knows it leads to emotional and social issues but they’re mostly about becoming an insufferable know it all and having your neighbors puke in their mouth every time you bring them a plateful of Martha Stewart-esque cookies and offhandedly mention how to improve their garden soil, remove the moss from their roof, and get that spot from their collar.  Ahem. There is more than one reason Hermione Granger is my favorite Hogwarts character.

The Germans have a word, Besserwisser, to describe such a person, and I’m pretty sure I’m one of them.  I recently read that the sin of gluttony also can be applied to overachievers or workaholics who are more concerned with the consumption or production of work/goods than one actually requires.  Hmmmm…  So it’s not enough to be an annoying prig, I’ve also got a cardinal sin to deal with.

And the thing is, I love my life. I love being busy, I love all of the things I do, and if I only had the ability to live for a few hundred years, perhaps I would feel that I could slow the pace or take breaks more often. I am trying to cram lifetimes of projects into this one because I like living.  There are just so many things to learn and I don’t want to miss a single one.  I am trying to get better at taking breaks especially as I can feel my body changing as I get closer to 40, and I am trying to get better at keeping my mouth shut. As Anthony Shaftesbury said “Giving advice is sometimes only showing our wisdom at the expense of others.” Ugh. I don’t want to be THAT girl.

But this blog…maybe this would be a better outlet than advising my long suffering friends and family.  I think, I hope, people read this because they want to know about the different things that people do, and how they live, and maybe they even want to know why.   Or I could just become a vampire, or some other immortal being, and live forever. That would be cool too.

Today is Thursday, and my only day in an empty house. Robert brings the girls to opera lessons a couple of hours away and I seem to have the house to myself for a glorious 6 or 7 hours!  Bliss!  Of course I have a massive to-do list, but I’m also going to listen to a brain numbing, embarrassingly compelling, lusty, and addicting audiobook about vampires.  I managed to finish both of the owl sweaters for my girls, no photos for Violet yet but here is Willow in her sweater (no button eyes sewn on as of yet):

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sock yarns and Wild Flyers!

So many projects, so little time!  Sometimes it helps to have ADHD tendencies (although I normally prefer the hunter vs farmer theory that ADHD is an expected evolutionary adaptation to hunting lifestyles) and sometimes it doesn’t.  I need to finish the first of two owl sweaters (have most of the body and one arm done), finish the lace scarf I was actually trying to make for myself, re-organize my studio and add the new inventory of yarns, pre-draft and spin the remainder of 9 new colorways plus 2 colorways from the previous dye day that I haven’t even touched yet, and start playing with my new Majacraft Wild Flyer. And that’s just some of the fiber stuff and nothing to do with my mundane life, which at the moment is begging for tax filings, housecleanings, homeschooling, bill paying, schedule making, annual report writing, and gawd knows what else.

First though, I have to say that I’m particularly pleased with the latest round of sock yarns. I ordered a Colonial wool superwash/nylon blend and I think I possibly like it better than the Merino/Bamboo/Nylon that I used last time around. I was worried that the Colonial would be too coarse but it’s really quite lovely, sort of a soft Corriedale wool feel. I think it will knit up beautifully and wear well. Here’s what I made:

I have two of each dyelot, 100 gram skeins with approximately 385 yards each. You can find them here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Yarnarchy?section_id=7455721

I have been giving this whole handpainted but commercially spun concept a lot of thought lately. While my heart definitely lies with handspun, I can’t deny that I do love handpainting the commercial yarns.  It’s a totally different thing. Idealistically, I prefer handspun over commercially prepared yarns but what can I say? I’m a Luddite at heart. I am thinking about expanding my product line to include a lot more of the handpainted yarns and marketing to wholesalers.  One thing that production spinning has taught me is that I cannot expect to do it forever.  I am wearing out my joints faster than my wheels.  I can choose to farm out some of my spinning, either as a business owner or open Yarnarchy up as a collective, or I can pace myself a bit more. I may do both.  Regardless, I love the handpainted yarns and after doing research on electric skein winders… I know, King Lud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd) is rolling in his grave… I think I must have one. My birthday is right around the corner!

The handspun is coming along too…I dyed 9 colorways and here is the first:

But the biggest news is that my Majacraft Wild Flyer arrived!  I haven’t played with yet, because I’m trying to be responsible and get through some of the fiber mountain in my living room before I get caught up in coils, tufts, and beehives.

I am also trying to make my schedule of events for the year, picking and choosing which festivals or markets would be the best for Yarnarchy to attend.  Any suggestions?

PS-Get free US shipping during the month of Feb using the coupon code: bemine

Romance!

I am embarrassingly interested in holidays. Even though I’m not religious, even though they’re made up or co-opted or just plain ridiculous. I like Valentine’s Day, even though it is probably a rip off of Lupercalia. I love it for all of the sappy romance, the beauty and sentimentality of antique Valentine’s Day cards, love it for the rows of pink and red in every department store. This year I am planning to bake some beautiful heart shaped confections and deliver packages of them to the local businesses I frequent. I am also going to have special sales on Etsy! The first week will feature the pinkest colorway I make, Cotton Candy, at 20% off….get a skein for a paltry $16! The next week I think I’ll feature Bronte, which I absolutely love.

Because, of course, I had to order that Interweave magazine special “Jane Austen Knits.” It’s a visual feast. Speaking of visual feasts, I have been indulging in a ton of fiber and knitting porn lately. I want this:

A four yard motorized skein winder from Nancy’s KnitKnacks. Only a wee bit over a grand, I’ll have to try Santa next year. I also watched this lady:

Fastest knitter in the world. She holds her yarn in a much different manner than I do, doesn’t pop her left index finger upwards at all. I can see how it would make pick knitting even faster….

Also, I watched the fastest crocheter in the world. There’s no way to be subtle here, so I’m just going to toot my own horn and say that I am very very fast at crochet. Quite. When I saw the video with Lisa Gentry, I was surprised to find that it didn’t seem that fast to me. I took her “challenge” and I did worse than I thought I would! She uses triple crochet which is the stitch I use least often (of the common stitches that is). I just found a site for crochet competition that gives a certain number of points per stitch type (4 for dbl crochet, 3 for turning stitch) and I think I’m going to give it another whirl.

So…yeah…fiber porn. Must be the winter.

Owls!

Here goes…I’m just about to start making matching owl sweaters for my girls. I bought the pattern on Ravelry here http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/owls-2 and I also bought the child version. Although the adult version seems a bit more complex with the shaping, I think I will make Violet an adult version since she’s just about too big for the kiddo size.

Violet is growing up. She was always stick thin, underweight as a toddler and child even though she was a whopping 10 1/2 pounds at birth. During the last year or so, she started putting on weight as is normal for a girl getting ready to start puberty. Although she definitely has some unhealthy food preferences (what kid doesn’t like the white food group?) we eat 99% organic, and she’s gluten and dairy free so it’s not like she’s eating a bunch of junk. We went shopping yesterday to spend her holiday gift cards and I saw a very familiar look on her face as she tried on clothing in front of the three sided mirror. As a child I was always a bit round and it caused me serious grief, especially as my parents didn’t really know how to deal with it. I started officially dieting in the 2nd grade, and shopping trips for school clothes were always stressful-often resulting in a bunch of outfits purchased a size below what I actually wore. This was to “encourage” me to lose weight before school started. Ugh. Anyway, our household is very body positive and my kids have access to all manner of healthy food. Thankfully, because all we really have to do is to remind her to make good food choices and encourage physical activity instead of making some kind of massive change in household food or worse, singling her out and making her eat something different than everyone else (been there). We have been talking to her a lot about growing, puberty…how the round tummy will morph into round breast and booty, how she doesn’t need to lose weight but rather just pay attention to how she’s eating so that she maintains her weight as she’s still growing. Sufficed to say, I do not want to knit a sweater and wind up with something ill-fitting or tight. I am determined to raise my girls to have the resources to eat in a healthful manner and to love their bodies throughout all of the phases, changes, and conditions we find ourselves in.

So..matching sweaters. Owl sweaters! I want one! I actually ordered yarn for these projects and bought a pattern, so this had better be good. I didn’t want to use handspun (I may have already mentioned that Violet LOST her last handspun sweater) and I found a good deal so it wasn’t going to save that much to order ecru yarn wholesale and dye it myself. If all goes well, I’ll post photos along the way.

I am doing more spinning but the weather has been so dreadful that I can’t even take photos! I had to miss my knitting machine lesson and first club meeting because the snow was still keeping us in the driveway. Now all we have is rain, slush, mini-icebergs, and mud. Lots of that.

I want to find some local (Seattle-B’ham) knitters who want to host a yarn party. I love doing yarn parties (think Tupperware but with yarn!) and I think they’re my very favorite way to peddle my wares. Any takers? Host(ess) gets 10% of party sales in shopping credit! I bring games and prizes!

Snowed in!

That’s right folks.  Can’t leave the farm. Those of you who don’t live in the county have likely missed out on this experience.  In my opinion, it’s grand. At least for the first few days. We usually get a week or so of deep snowfall once a year and a bit more here and there throughout the season  but overall our winters are mild. More rain than cold.  Sometimes we have a long period of heavy snow, like four or five years ago during what is now known locally as “Snow-Pocalyspe.”  We were basically snowed in for over a month that year, managing to get out in a huge 4 wheel drive truck a couple of times to replenish supplies.

I heard that Seattle got 6 inches of snow. This is a lot for that area and I imagine everyone fancies themselves “snowed in” as 2 inches will cause school and bus route closures in Seattle.  This is not snowed in. I don’t know if you can really be snowed in while residing in an urban setting unless there is a bona fide blizzard happening.  Might be too risky to drive, but you can always walk a few blocks to restock dinner supplies.  When we’re snowed in, we literally can’t get our vehicles out of the drive.  We can certainly walk, but to where? It’s miles and miles to the nearest grocery store.   Before we had the internet, we would rely on our observations to predict the weather.  Sometimes it just smells like snow.  Now that we can check weather forecasts, we have a little advance warning and can make a trip to stock up on goodies,  pet food, and dish soap.  I remember one winter, about 15 years ago…I guess I was 22… we were living in a tiny cabin in the woods, way off of the beaten path and at a higher elevation than the farm we live on now.  Our oldest daughter had pretty severe asthma as a young child (still has it but is much easier to manage now) and we needed to get her to the hospital.  The ambulance couldn’t make it down our drive, so my parents drove their big 4×4 truck about 15 miles to the main road junction to meet us and we hiked out–my sweetie carried the car seat over his head as he blazed the trail through four feet of snow, I carried our girl behind. Drove 40 miles to the nearest hospital and she recovered nicely.

That’s snowed in.

Thankfully, everyone is healthy so we’re just enjoying ourselves and are happy to be snowed in for a few days.  I am making lots of yarn and we went sledding today.  Here are some photos, first of yarn and then of our outdoor adventures. I’ll also include a few photos of our lovely wood and stone cottage.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

One more thing…an amazing 10 year old friend died in a tragic accident last week. I can’t even being to tell you about this bright star of a boy, but you can read about him all over the internet.  His family is also amazing and our community is hoping to help them with the massive medical bills-if you want to help, please click on the link.  http://calebkors.chipin.com/caleb-kors

 

 

Art yarns! Plus, my daughter is a soap making genius!

I have just listed some gorgeous art yarns on Etsy. My personal favorite is this one:

I kind of just want to wear this around my neck as jewelry. I swear, my Aunt wore something like this as a necklace with a giant sweater dress back in the 80′s. If you don’t like the bronze look, I also have some yummy Valentine’s Day yarns!

In my local village, there has been a small craft gallery of sorts for the past few years. I declined to get very involved with it–there were lots of lovely artists and some friends–but I knew that anything I had to offer would either be unpopular with tourists (probably very few yarnies looking for handspun in the summer months) or unpopular with a couple of the artists involved (my kitschenqueen line for instance, you can’t really have intentional kitsch next to unintentional kitsch). I left some yarn for them to display on consignment and promptly forgot about it. The gallery closed at the end of the year and a handful of skeins were returned to me. They were a blast from the past! I make so very much yarn these days that even a skein from 12 months ago seems ancient, forgotten. Foreign color combinations and everything is bulky. I can’t believe I used to even sell skeins I’d hand-processed from raw fleece! I must have been making….$2 an hour? Ack. Here are some photos of those forgotten skeins.

My other news of the day…wait! There are two bits of news. Oh! Three!  The first is THIS:

I bought it and it is mine oh mine! I found this knitting machine on craigslist for $200, bothered some Ravelry members for their advice, made a 4 hour round trip (and ferry ride) to pick it up, made another four hour round trip to Seattle a day later to meet with a very nice Ravelry member who sold me a stand for it (she’s located on the other side of the state but happened to be passing through Seattle). She looked it over, made some suggestions, and gave me a brief intro on setting it up and basic knitting. The machine wasn’t really dirty but had a small area with rust and overall was incredibly dry and tight, having not been used in probably decades.  I took it home, gave it a good scrubbing with denatured alcohol, and practically soaked it in gun oil.  The moving parts are actually moving smoothly now.  However…even with a video of the nice Ravelry lady setting up the machine, I could not really get it going. I set it up without any trouble (I think) but the truth is that I am missing some key bits of information about the basic mechanics of what a knitting machine actually does.  Knitting, I know.  But there are like 65416354747634158 parts to this sucker and although I can conceptualize something basic like knitting a flat piece of fabric, I don’t understand what/how certain parts combine to make decorative stitches, tubes, tucks.  I spent some time online searching for a local teacher but apparently my darling Swiss machine is drastically different than standard Japanese machine and not very many teachers are available for this style of knitting machine. Finally though, a lead came through and on January 21st I am going to Seattle to meet up with a Passap knitting machine group (!) in the morning, and staying the afternoon for a long private lesson with the coordinator of the club.  Hooray!  More on this later… I have decided that I’m not even going to try the machine until then because I’m probably wasting my time trying to self-teach in the interim plus, as it turns out, I think it may be possible for me to break needles by setting up the sucker incorrectly.  The last thing I need is to break something on a complicated machine that I have no idea how to operate, let alone repair.

But 2 hour socks and 4 hour sweaters are nearly within my grasp!!!

Next bit of news-I have decided to make the girls matching sweaters and my goal is to have them finished by Valentine’s Day.  The sweaters are darling and the pattern may be found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/owls-2

I have actually ordered commercial yarn for this project, something that I never do. But Violet lost her last handspun sweater and I’m a little more hesitant this time around.

And finally…Willow’s Etsy shop is up and running! I spent hours on this yesterday, taking and editing photos, writing descriptions, creating listings.  She’ll have to take care of it after this but I offered to get her set up. Turned out to be a bigger job than I was expecting, since the soap descriptions were so arty.  Her soap is so lovely, I hope she does well and is able to have some extra income from her labors. Everyone should definitely take a look at her work here: www.sevensinssoap.etsy.com

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

New Yarn!

Some of my latest endeavors:

I have also become the proud owner of a Passap Duomatic 80 Knitting Machine. I’ll admit, I’m totally overwhelmed by the mechanics of it but am driving to Seattle tomorrow to meet with a woman who has promised to sell me a stand and show me some basics.  Hooray!

 

I made it

The school sleepover went quite well actually, and aside from being somewhat exhausted I seem to have made it though unscathed. I did have a major setback about three hours before the event while baking the gingerbread house components. My carpenter sweetie was teasing me about being a cookie carpenter and I was just congratulating myself on making the dough come out exactly even (not a spare gingerbread man’s worth) when I realized exactly why it is that he builds houses and I don’t. I had somehow forgotten to make the walls for all 8 houses.  I made the roof pieces and each of the ends, but no walls. Drat!  I flew to the local grocery store to get more molasses, rushed home and made more dough, tossed it into the freezer to chill, and turned off the oven to let the last two pieces finish baking as the first students arrived. Whew.

The houses did pretty well.  I should have made twice as much frosting though, and will remember it for next time. They definitely held together well-that Royal Icing stuff is ridiculously cement like-and the kids were thrilled with the results. Here are some photos, starting with humble beginnings  and ending with a couple of photos of our hot cocoa mix project.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We were quite prolific. I had the kids from 2pm until 10 this morning and we managed to needle felt a small creature (finch, pig, hen and chicks, dog, bat), create a layered candle, make two mugs of hot cocoa mix, build and decorate gingerbread houses, eat supper, play White Elephant, read the entire book of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” watch three holiday movies, eat tons of cookies from the cookie exchange, sew a hat and scarf set, and actually get some sleep.

I am supposed to be working on the dreaded holiday letter instead of writing another blog post.  I have had quite a bit of fun with holiday letters over the years but every idea this time around seems contrived.  For several years I wrote a full page of outrageous lies–that our 12 year old had received a restraining order from a famous musician for stalking, her younger sister was training for the beauty pageant scene and had to use the curling iron in the outhouse since we don’t have indoor plumbing. I said that we had joined a cult, that Robert had taken two more wives, we had discovered that we had been a sheik and a Celtic mermaid priestress in our former lives.  The more outrageous the better.  The first year I wrote a both a normal letter and a fake one and randomly sent them out.  Since our lives are quite colorful in reality, many people really did believe some of that junk and the rumors that went around our extended family and friends were priceless.

Then there was the year that I sent a holiday Mad Lib. Do you remember doing those as a kid? Mad Libs are a word gamewhere one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story, usually with funny results. Another year it was a holiday crossword, and the year after that I did a hilarious quiz.  Last year I said Bah Humbug and sent a regular letter. This year I toyed with the ideas of trading cards, comic book cover, and flip book but I just don’t have the time and energy.   I just wrote a draft of one and read it to my sweetie but he says that only rural living people will get that it’s a joke. Here’s an excerpt:

“Dear Friends and Family Members-

This adorable note is being sent on paper I made myself (from wildcrafted nettle fiber, silk cocoons which we raised ourselves, and recycled plastic bags which I don’t use but gathered from our unenlightened neighbors) to tell you what we have all been up to.

Since we are self-employed, I had the time to get up early this morning and make a new sofa with reclaimed barn timbers and glue made from local tree resins. After hand carving traditional Salish designs and decorating it with pigments made from aronia berries I gathered on our property, Violet got out her loom and wove a tapestry cloth in crimson and chartreuse.  We covered the sofa with the fabric using upholstery tacks we made ourselves in our charcoal fired blacksmith shop. Yes, we even make the charcoal.

By then, it was time to start setting the table for our standard farm breakfast.  Willow accidentally broke a place setting the night before, so I collected clay from the local creek and made another set of dishes, stamping them with an elaborately handcarved woodblock I’d created before bed.  We prepared a delicious porridge made from home grown oats, our own dried blueberries, honey from our bees, and wildcrafted hazelnuts.  The girls milked the goats and prepared a fresh chevre-as we’re vegan we don’t actually eat animal products but a farm breakfast just doesn’t look right without a tray of cheese and fresh butter!  We ground our own flour (by hand) from our no-till wheat field and made fresh bread using the sourdough starter that has been in our family for 389 years.  We got out the 200 pound press and squeezed out some fresh apple cider using heirloom apples that we grew from trees which we grafted ourselves using cuttings from local abandoned orchards.  Robert took his handsaw and cut a section of an alder tree which we harvested in accordance with our eco-forestry plan.  He carved our family name onto the board which he used as a smoking plank for the freshly caught salmon he brought from the creek.  The “Goforth” salmon was served with fresh dill grown in our own handblown glass cloches out in the garden, and topped with roasted homegrown chestnuts.

After dressing in clothing made entirely from natural fibers which were handspun, hand dyed, hand woven, and hand tailored, we went to work.  Willow is attending her 2^nd year of college but got up a bit early before class to make 375 bars of handmade soap which she will sell at the local farmer’s market. Violet is busy with her homeschool assignments but she also raises a flock of 23 ducks, manages a local children’s garden, weaves and sews all of her own clothing, and makes the family supply of toothpaste. Robert spends his days as a carpenter and timber frame builder, but he also makes time for his specialty horticulture garden, and his travels in his handbuilt, woodfired hot air balloon.”

Ugh. I’m not usually a drinker but perhaps a hot toddy would make this letter writing go a bit quicker.  Any suggestions? On the letter, not the drinking…

I normally refrain from ranting or proselytizing on this blog, but I can’t help myself at the moment. I was in the grocery store about an hour ago and listened to an older woman loudly complain to the cashier about those idiots in the city outlawing plastic grocery sacks. She uses them, darn it! What in the world is she going to do if they stop allowing them in our community? How will she line her small trash cans? The cashier pointed out that they will still offer paper sacks but she vehemently stated that she has no use for paper and that they go straight into the trash. I didn’t want to, but out it came…the continent of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean and how many cities/states/countries are banning plastic shopping bags because there are just so many of them and they ultimately wind up in landfills or Texas sized trash islands in the ocean. She was undaunted and still absolutely righteous about her right to consume as many plastic bags as she desired. At least the cashier seemed relieved to have someone else dealing with the lady and her ignorant and selfish opinion.

Don’t you ever wonder sometimes…come across someone new and think…how is it possible that I share the planet with this person?

I think that people forget that we did perfectly well before plastic garbage bags.  We managed to keep ourselves hydrated before plastic water bottles, we fed ourselves before the invention of fast food, we found affordable goods from local shopkeepers before Walmart.  Heck, we were dandy before microwave ovens, cars, malls, and drive-through espresso.  Different, but dandy nevertheless.  When you don’t have the option any longer, you discover that most “necessities” are actually luxuries.  That’s a silver lining of this economic depression.  Just like people are discovering that they are still lovely without the monthly $200 haircut, that lady at the grocery store will find that she can rinse her trash cans out after emptying them or even…dare I say it?…reduce her waste stream and get rid of the little suckers all together.

I have to get back to my latest endeavor: 8 Gingerbread Houses.  Why in the world would any person need to make 8 houses made of cookies? A better question would be “Why would a sane person invite their elementary aged students for a sleepover/craft day and happily volunteer to tackle gingerbread houses for everyone?”  I will post photos tomorrow, the class will be here in just two hours!