It has been a hard week around here, as we battled two upper respiratory bugs back to back.  Finally, we’re on the mend!   So,  to cheer everyone up after all that time cooped-up indoors,  following homeschool co-op yesterday, we had lunch at our favorite Asian market (where else can you get a fresh, delicious hot lunch for $1.25/kid?  Steamed buns stuffed with Asian pork sausage, hard-boiled egg, shiitakes and onions?  Yum!!).

After lunch, we walked across the street to the best thrift store in Portland.  We’re not big on shopping, but a trip to the thrift store tends to be our favorite pick-me-up ( besides our weekly visits to OMSI).  PACS thrift store had the nicest volunteers, great prices, and an amazing selection of vintage fabric, games, toys, craft supplies, dishes, stationery, books, etc.   And it’s right in our part of town – about 5 minutes from our house (and, of course, just across the street from the above-mentioned amazing Lily Market).

We have pretty strict  self-imposed rules for thrift-store spending – we may not spend more than 50 cents on a toy, $1 on dishes, $2 on vintage board games or linens, $5 on a bag containing several items or any one “extraordinary” item.  Well, yesterday in the fabric section, there was a 1×2x3ft plastic bag crammed full of wrinkly bundles of fabric.  The price was $5 (on sale!).  I could see some pieces of very pretty high-quality quilting fabric, and took a risk and bought it.

Oh my goodness, it was a good risk to take!!

When I got home and sorted through the bag, there was quite a stack of good-quality flannel (enough to make about three kits when we have another sewing service party in the coming months.), and a total of approximately 4+ yds of fat-1/4, 1/4 yd and 5×5 inch squares of lovely cotton prints.  But, the vast majority of the fabric was my favorite – Depression-era reproduction fabric!

Altogether, there were over 40 pieces of 1/4-yd, fat-1/4 and 1/2 yd remnants of high-quality Depression-era reprints (just a few are pictured above), and many more little pieces (great for doll and scrap quilts).

My favorite (even though I’m not partial to pink), is the 1/2 yd of coffee-mug print above.  It will go perfectly in some French-press cozies or some mug rugs for Christmas gifts, don’t you think?

Well, now to get outside and string up our raspberry canes (yes, better late than never), and muck out the chicken coop.  Then, we have nothing on our schedule for the afternoon except playing the two new games we also picked up yesterday (a wooden puzzle-based game and a 1960’s board game) and Christmas-gift crafting!

Blessings on your weekend!

A friend from the coast and my next-door neighbor are both expecting, and we wanted to make them both something special.  The girls and I shopped the remnant section at Fabric Depot, as well as the fabric shelves at our local thrift store, and put together two forest-themed baby quilts.

This one is a Rain Forest theme for the next-door neighbor.  We used thrifted flannel sheets (triple layered) for the batting and a thrifted cotton sheet for the backing fabric (thrifted sheets = my favorite frugal quilt backing).

This was the first time in years I’ve made a separate bias binding instead of doing a self-binding backing.  What a pain it was!!  I forgot how long it takes to make, and iron and while the effect was nice, I won’t use it on my next few quilts…

The next quilt is for a friend who is an amateur mycologist – it’s a Forest Floor quilt, complete with mushroom and tree-ring prints.

The quilt is just a simple four-patch with some mustard-colored Egyptian-print thrifted fabric for the back and binding.  Bea helped me lay out the pattern and cut some of the blocks, Ruth helped sew about half of the 4-patch blocks, and sewed the borders on.

Now, to find a time to drag 4 kiddos to stand in line at the Post Office so we can send it out….

I have come to realize that there is absolutely no way for me to maintain a clean house, work on learning projects with the kids, get the yard/poultry chores done, cook meals, care for an infant, and accomplish any serious crafting.  It’s just not possible to keep up with it all, no matter how it may appear from the limited perspective of crafty-homeschool-mom blogs.  For the moment, the unfolded laundry is piling up, the living room is home to dust bunnies and crumbs galore and the toy basket looks like it exploded all over the front rooms, but that’s okay, because we had a great time working together to bless our friends in a small way.

And, now to have a “cleaning and catch-up day” before we start all over with a new quilt for another friend expecting an addition to her family…

…reading a few chapters in Ann Voskamp’s book before the children were up…

…enjoying granola in the breakfast nook after morning chores, watching chickens, ducks mucking happily around the yard  (Cran-Walnut Granola recipe at the bottom)

…quilting for a neighbor’s baby, due in 2 weeks, while the children had breakfast.

A welcome reprieve before tackling the general chaos of the day.

Larksong’s Cranberry Walnut Granola

Preheat oven to 325F, and get out two large jellyroll pans.

In a large bowl, combine:

6 cups old fashioned oats

2 cups unsweetened, unsulfured coconut

1 cup wheat germ

1 heaping cup sesame seeds

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1-2 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

pinch of sea salt

In a saucepan, on med-heat, combine 1  cup of honey, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 3 tbsp dark brown sugar, 1 cup veg oil (I use 1/4 cup hazelnut oil, 3/4 cup veg oil), and heat until warm and honey is thin.  Stir vigorously, and then pour over dry ingredients.

Toss all until combined, then spread over two sheets and bake 20 min.

Remove from oven, stir, scraping around the edges especially, since they will brown first.

Return to oven, and bake approx 20-25 min more, scraping and stirring granola every 5-7 min to prevent scorching in parts.

When granola is dark, toasty, and fragrant, remove from oven and immediately stir in 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries.  While granola is still hot, transfer to a glass or other nonstick bowl, or granola will stick to sheets as it cools.  When totally cooled, break up with a fork and put in sealed jars to keep crisp.  Will keep 1 month, but ours is eaten up in less than a week.

(Cost comparison: similar granola at New Seasons Market – $8.99/lb.   Estimated cost of homemade – about $2.50/lb (all items purchased in bulk to cut costs considerably, except walnuts, which were gleaned from a friend’s tree.)

We’re back!  I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in over two months!  Morning sickness is finally (mostly) gone, and life is getting back to normal a little bit.  So, let’s call this a fresh start, shall we?  We’ve decided to make a concerted effort to use this space to document and reflect on what’s going on in our lives,  especially our lives in the garden.  We’re still knitting, baking, homeschooling, spinning, making crafty messes, but the focus of our service at this point is the BCS Teaching Garden, so expect to see and read all about what’s growing in our yard.

The garden year is just kicking off – in the past two weeks, our friend Scott added wood-and-wire gates so the chickens and children can safely roam the backyard.   We planted several more dwarf fruit trees, as well as more currants, blueberries, silverberries, huckleberries and thimbleberries from One Green World (and boy, it’s doubly hard work when your pregnant!).   The planting plan for the year is all set, we even managed to seed the eggplants this week. (Although, we’d better get the grow lights set up before they germinate!).

Earlier this week, the free load of wood chips I ordered from the power company finally came (the order had been placed in early October, but better late than never!).  Your electric utility is a great source of FREE wood chips for mulching garden beds and paths.   All of the trees they trim out of the power lines are chipped up and thrown away.  If you call and place an order, they will gladly dump them in your yard instead.

You can see how large the load is compared to my two year-old – it’s a very large truck and it dumps a lot of chips.  It may seem like you could never use that much mulch, but we have gone through 4 loads so far on our 1/4 acre, and from now on, will probably use about 1 load a year to keep paths and beds replenished with mulch.  We could never have afforded to purchase that much mulch, so this is a great economical choice for us.

If you’re interested in mulching your yard to conserve water, suppress weed growth, reduce muddy patches, and add biomass to your garden, now (before the growing season gets going) is the time to place an order!

A few tips/tidbits of info when ordering chips from the utility company:

1)If you’ve never had a load delivered from the power company, please be aware that this is NOT the neat, uniformly shaped pieces of wood you might get when buying bagged wood chips from the garden center.  It is chipped-up tree trimmings, and it will include large pieces, twigs, possibly leaves, pine needles, and chips of several different species.

2)If your yard is like ours, you can make it work no matter what they bring you.  If, however, you need mulch specifically for plant beds, it’s good to check that a load isn’t 100% before they drop it on your driveway.  Pine is far too acidic to mulch beds, unless they happen to be blueberry or currant beds.  It does, however, work great in pathways.  Our first load was almost all maple – and we used it all on planting beds, and waited for a less-perfect load to mulch the paths.

3)If you want mulch free of leaves, order chips in the winter, when deciduous trees will be bare.  Chips full of leaves are more difficult to shovel and spread, and don’t look as neat.

4)If your load has long sticks as this load did for us, put them off into a pile and use them for pea brush and other plant supports.  Or, place them underneath the cardboard when sheet mulching a new section of yard.  Over time, they will break down and add biomass to the soil.

Next up: seed starting!

Blessings on your as you start your garden year,

Angela

When entering our home, there is no coat closet, or even much of an entryway to speak of.   Our kids tend to walk in the door and immediately dump their coats on the floor.  And, of course, the dog promptly makes a nest in them and takes a nap.  Even if they take their coats back to their room, they aren’t tall enough to hang them up in their closet, so they end up in a pile on the floor back there.  It drives me nuts.

The other day, we were at Cost Plus/World Market, because it’s close to church, and I can’t resist going in when we drive by, especially at Christmas time.  (I love everything in that store!)  They had a big bin full of Indian ceramic dresser knobs and little hooks, and for $8 ($2 for each kid, including “Baby Tummy”), we had a solution to the coat problem!

A very small change makes a big difference sometimes, and a little less chaos is very good thing. 

My sister and I have talked about making homemade laundry soap for years – it’s so much more economical, and environmentally friendly, plus it’s so easy to make.  I’d shied away from it because, frankly, the laundry soap my friends were making looked like snot, and I wasn’t up for it.

Then, a friend told me that she had started making Amanda Soule’s recipe for powdered laundry soap. It was like a revelation!  I didn’t have to make snotty noodle soup soap!  I could make laundry powder!

I did some fishing around on the internet, and tried some recipes, and here’s the one I like best (a blending of several):

Larksong’s Laundry Powder

1 Bar Fels Naptha Soap

1 Bar Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint or Lavender Soap (it’s 3x as expensive as Fels Naptha and I found two bars is too strong of a scent for me) OR you can use 1 bar Ivory soap.

4 cups Washing Soda (soda ash)

4 cups Natural Borax

(you can also add 1 cup of Baking Soda if you need it – I sprinkle it on diapers in the pail,  so I didn’t add it)

Directions:

1.  Unwrap Fels Naptha soap, place on a paper towel, and microwave for 1 1/2 – 2 minutes.   (Caution!!  Soap will be very hot!!)

Here’s a bar of Fels Naptha laundry soap straight out of the paper.

This is what it looks like after 2 min in the microwave – it puff up, and is very easy to quickly grate.

Repeat with Ivory soap.  Note: Dr. Bronner’s is a castile soap, and tends to melt in the microwave more than puff up, so I just grate it as-is.  It takes a little more elbow-grease, and the kids usually aren’t up for it – they much prefer to grate the “puffy soap”.

Let soap cool thoroughly (about 10 min), and grate into a bowl.

Measure and stir in borax, washing soda (and optional baking soda).    Stir thoroughly, and pour into a sealable bucket.   Makes 32-64 loads, depending on whether you have a conventional machine or an HE machine.

Soap flakes have a tendency to settle to the bottom, so I invert the bucket a few times before measuring.

You may have to fiddle with the measurements a bit – depending on your machine, and how dirty your laundry is -

I use 2 Tbsp per load for our HE machine, and 3 Tbsp for diapers (since it’s low-sudsing, it’s perfect for HE machines), and I had read that folks with conventional machines use 3-4 Tbsp per load.

Next time I think I’ll use ivory instead of Dr. Bronner’s mint soap, and add a little orange or lemon essential oil – while the mint is nice, I think I prefer my laundry to smell like citrus.

I estimate my total cost per load is about $0.09!  Not too shabby!

We were all in a bit of a funk yesterday, after too many days cooped up being sick in our PJs, so we decided to make a run to our favorite thrift store, just down the street.  I was feeling pretty nauseated, and trips out and about are  daunting right now (being sick in public is no fun), and we almost didn’t go, but the kids were begging and begging, and I knew they needed an outing.

And let me tell you, I am SO glad they talked me into it – we had our best thrifting expedition ever!

Little Hen found the old paper star above ($0.75!), and we also picked up:

An old but unused Mancala-type game, still in the box, $2.50 (for my hubby for Christmas, since he collects games).

Several dishes – $0.25-$1.00 each, including this ceramic fish box (for jewelry?) and the floral bowl.

A little wooden tractor-trailer for TumTum, $0.50.

We had several other good finds, too, but here’s the real treasure.  I almost fell over when I saw them in the case up front:

SHUTTLES FOR MY LOOM!!  I have been looking for affordable used shuttles since I was given my large floor loom, since new shuttles run $30-$50 each!  And today I found them!  $5 for rag shuttles, and

beautiful boat shuttles with extra bobbins, $8!!

Apparently, the thrift store received an entire estate, including two floor looms (one large, one medium, made by Schacht), and many other weaving supplies (which I wish I could have afforded!  Including more shuttles, yarn-meters, yarn winders, etc).  If you’re interested, or know of a serious weaver, who might like a large loom for a good deal (and in great shape), contact the PACS Thrift Store in Northeast Portland.   This thrift store has a wonderful ministry, and it’s a very select group of folks who are in the market for a loom, much less two, so I hope a weaver who needs a loom will be able to connect with them!

All in all, a great thrifting trip, and if, when the smaller loom goes on sale (eventually 75% off, if no one purchases it before then), I may have to consider it as a Christmas + birthday gift for Little Hen, but if it finds a new home before then, that would be just fine by me, too.   And, when I’m feeling better, I can’t wait to get a weaving up on the loom and use my new shuttles!

I’ve been given permission to put up a section of a recent post from Andrea’s blog, Babe of My Heart:

Every month, I have to deal with what most girls deal with…a monthly cycle. Sorry if that’s too personal to say–but it should come as no surprise to you. I take for granted that every month I stock up on the things I need…and I can get them in any size, weight and style I would like. And not only that–I complain about my cramps. I complain that I am a bit inconvenienced and I remind my husband that he is lucky to be a boy and he doesn’t have to endure such hardship each month.

SO…let me ask you this—what do you think the women and young girls of Korah do during this time? What will it be like for the hundreds of girls who are (praise GOD!) being sponsored to leave Korah this Fall and go to a boarding school? What will they do as they try to sit in class during this time? What do the woman and girls we support in Zambia do?

EVER THOUGHT ABOUT THIS?

Well, let me tell you what they do. They squat. They wait for their week to end. On their heavy days, some roll up newspapers and make their own tampons. Many get infections. The infections make their parents and husbands think they have STDs and they endure being left or abused. Some use a single piece of old clothing–and when it’s soiled–they rinse it and use it again…although it’s still wet—it’s some what clean.

Did you know that in Africa the dropout rate for for young girls in school is 40% when they have no sanitary supplies? BUT when they are provided them–it rises to just 8%?

What can we do about it?

Andrea, and also  Sarah at Titus Home, have put out a call, and given us a practical way to help these girls – they are encouraging ladies around the country to have sewing parties and make washable feminine products to be sent to these girls and young women in Ethiopia and Zambia.

So, if you’d like to take up the challenge, and spend a few hours in service to these young women (and make a concrete difference in their lives!), I’d like to invite you to join me

on September 25 · 9:00am – 12:00pm

at Central Bible Church

8815 NE Glisan St

WHAT TO BRING: your sewing machines, sergers, cutting mats, scissors, rotary cutters, thread, old towels or flannel sheets (for batting). Any spare velcro, snap closures you might have.

WHAT IS PROVIDED: patterns, ALL FABRIC, a few extra sewing machines and sergers. Coffee, snacks and CHILDCARE.

Last night, I made a sample kit today using the pattern supplied by The Red Tent Project.  The kit consists of 5-6 envelopes, each with snap closures, and half with leakproof PUL, for heavy days (see above).  It also includes 4 thick, “maxi” pads (see below), which unfold for easier drying on the line,  and 8 regular pads (see 2nd picture in this post),  which can be doubled up if needed.

If you are interested in making kits, but are unable to attend on the 25th, please e-mail me at angela.baker.knits@gmail.com, and I will send you the pattern and instruction details, as well as shipping addresses.  Or, if you prefer, select a pattern you like from the internet.  They are requesting that you use bright or dark print fabric, and prefer foldable inserts, since thicker pads and AIO designs do not dry well on the line.

To round out the kits, we are sewing a drawstring bag for all of the pieces, and attempting to collect 2-3 pair of new undies to include, as well.  If you might like to contribute to the project by donating funds for new undies, please contact me at the above e-mail address.  Thanks!

Look what a $1 thrifted double bed sheet, $0.35 worth of thrifted ribbon and eyelet lace, 2 buttons, and 3 hours of time can produce:

A PARTY FROCK!

The project is based on Made by Heidi’s Tutorial, although I made a few small changes (fully lined the dress, widened the bodice, used eyelet trim for the shoulders instead of making a ruffle…).  Heidi’s method of making this dress was GREAT – easy for a novice seamstress like me to follow and reproduce – I could just wing-it and still have the dress turn out nicely, which is exactly how I like to sew!!

Firecracker usually ends up with hand-me-down dresses from her big sister, and was surprised and thrilled that she got a new, extra-ladylike dress!   However, Little Hen (who, I think felt a bit left out) very politely asked if we can make her a party frock together next.   So, instead of packing up the sewing machine and cleaning up the living room, we’ll spend tomorrow after church working on a paper-patterned dress I started cutting out for her earlier in the week.

Thanks, Heidi, for the inspiration!!

Our chicken coop got a make-over this week!  Our next-door neighbors were getting rid of an old window, and they offered it to us since it was the perfect size for the hen house.  My husband cut a hole, attached the window, and then cut a nice frame out of trim we’d removed from a bedroom in the house.

A while back, I’d scored some returned exterior paint at the home center for $0.50/jar – one orange, one yellow.   We were thinking they’d be perfect for adding a sunshine or moon and stars…something to dress up the coop.  However, I have zero sense of composition, and my friend, Jenni, came to the rescue this morning and painted me a sunshine and also painted the little window.    Thank you, Jenni!!!