Miscellaneous

Saturday Tweets: Terminating the Turf Terminators

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Miscellaneous

Big List of Earth-Friendly (homemade, compostable, recyclable, no-plastic) Holiday Decorations

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Miscellaneous
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My previous post on this subject garnered so many excellent suggestions that I decided to condense all the suggestions into one big list for easy reference. In addition, I’ve added a new board to our Pintrest account called Compostable, Recyclable Homemade Holidays.  I’ve started gathering projects which reflect this list.

A big thank you to Bellen, fishbee, Hazel, Indigotiger, rainey, Michael and Practical Parsimony for offering suggestions!

I know–the last thing Pintrest needs is yet another board devoted to holiday decorations! But I figured my standards are a little sterner than most, so it is a worthwhile project. I really want these decorations to be able to return to the earth. This means I’m avoiding paint, glitter and Styrofoam (not to mention plastic and batteries!)  and I prefer things which don’t feature glue, or can use a simple non-toxic white glue.

Why this obsession with natural ornaments?

I like the idea of ephemeral decorations–decorations which are meant to last only for the season, maybe only for a week or two. It is more work to make decorations afresh every year, but gathering materials and making simple ornaments is an act of meditation and appreciation.

This kind of work helps us slow down and reconnect with nature. This alone can be enormously calming at a stressful time, and may help us back into a more expansive state of mind. The holidays can be so loud and jangly and rushed. Just stepping back and spending some time admiring the geometry of a pine cone or the cleverness of an acorn helps cleanse the mind of all that noise.

Seasons come and go. Holidays come and go. Ornaments which reflect the seasons should come and go, too. The fact that they don’t last, that they have to be savored in the correct season, is what makes them special.

Also, this kind of decorating also saves on storage space, and saves the labor of packing up ornaments once the season is over.

Most of these things can go to the recycle bin or the compost pile–or just to some obscure corner of nature to return to the earth.

But, more romantically, they can be hung outside for the remainder of their lives: ornaments for the fairies. This makes it easier to part with them at the end of the season.

Finally, these ornaments are light–they don’t burden our earth with yet more plastic and toxins. They aren’t made in some far off factory by an underpaid laborer. They are not helping the bottom line of some soulless big box store.

The List

This is broken down into two parts: the first list includes ornaments that come straight from nature, and which will only last a short time. Collect them on walks around the neighborhood, collect them as mementos of trips to the mountains, the beach, or grandma’s house. Bring them home and hang them straight up! At the end of the season, they can be returned to the earth.

The second list is more crafty, requiring more input from you, and creating ornaments which you may or may not decide to keep.

Straight from nature:

  • Sturdy winter berries
  • Rose hips
  • Dried herbs and flowers
  • Moss
  • Feathers
  • Cool looking seed pods ( milkweed pods, thistle heads,  sweet gum tree pods, sycamore pods, star anise, Indian cigar tree pods, magnolia pods–keep your eyes open in the autumn and you’ll find lots) If you want sparkle, sugar them instead of getting out the glitter.
  • Nuts
  • Clusters of acorns
  • Sticks covered with pretty moss and lichen
  • Curls of bark
  • Seashells
  • Dried hops
  • Fresh ivy
  • Fresh holly
  • Dried citrus peel spirals
  • Dried citrus slices
  • Wild grapevines made into tiny wreaths
  • Pine cones
  • abandoned or human-constructed bird nests, filled with moss, pine cones, quail eggs, candy…
  • Succulent rosettes–should last a week or more after cutting

Some assembly required

These projects require some crafting, and some are not as ephemeral as the ornaments above–you may want to keep them from year to year. Or, they are made stuff you find in your house, instead of out in nature.

If glue is necessary, use non-toxic glue. Make the yarn and cloth projects biodegradable by choosing cotton or wool yarn, and natural fiber cloth. Making little cloth ornaments is a great way to use up scrap cloth and yarn. Save colorful scrap paper for the paper projects.

  • Popcorn/cranberry strings (pro-tip: stale popcorn threads better)
  • Gather a few evergreen branches by the branch ends to make a broom or fan shape, decorate with a spray of berries, tie with a ribbon. Much easier than a wreath!
  • A few cranberries strung in a circle= mini wreath
  • Re-purpose old jewelry directly as tree ornaments, or use pieces in making other ornaments (loose beads, pins, chain, etc.)
  • Tie scraps of pretty cotton ribbon into bows on tree limbs
  • Make paper chains
  • Sugared flowers, leaves, berries, etc. White sugar adds a little natural bling to things
  • Milkweed pods glued into star shapes
  • Bay leaves glued into wreaths and stars.
  • Paper cones with raffia hangers filled with…sweets? berries?
  • Blown eggs, especially quail eggs
  • Origami birds, stars, boxes, wreaths, etc. (use up scrap wrapping paper!)
  • Paper birds
  • Paper snowflakes
  • Gingerbread figures
  • Bundles of cinnamon sticks
  • Homemade rock candy
  • Orange peel roses
  • Citrus pomanders (you know, clove-studded oranges)
  • Oranges with decorative carving of the peels  (see this, scroll down)
  • Stars made out of twigs
  • Creatures and whatnot nestled in walnut halves
  • A tiny boat made of a walnut half and a paper sail
  • Make little creatures out of teasels, acorns, milkweed pods, etc.
  • Make cookie-type ornaments out of a simple dough made of applesauce and cinnamon–add applesauce to cinnamon until it forms a dough. Just leave to dry–no baking, or maybe try drying in a very low oven. These smell great, and their scent can be revived by sanding them.
  • Tiny God’s eyes
  • Hollow an egg and cover surface with beans and seeds and rice. Can dip the finished egg in wax to seal,  can also swirl some wax inside the egg to strengthen it
  • Make tiny felt dolls, dressed with scrap cloth
  • Crochet tiny stockings
  • Cardboard stars wrapped with yard
  • Bird seed ornaments, either to hang outside right away or after the holidays
  • Needle felted creatures
  • Hang up corks from special bottles of wine or champagne
  • Slice a loofa into rings and add natural fiber bows to make little wreaths
  • Goats made out of straw (Yule Bocks)– a Finnish custom

If you want to add to this list, speak up in the comments and I’ll move your suggestions into the list.

Camping on Halloween Night

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Miscellaneous, Nature Awareness
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tent in the forest, autumn

I was lucky enough to be able to camp this Halloween weekend. While I love the costumes and the candy and the gentle anarchy of Halloween in the city, I was very happy to be able to spend this Halloween out in nature. My only other nature-based Halloween was many years ago, in rural Ireland, where I wandered the countryside alone at sunset, hoping to spot a ghost or a fairy or a faun.

Maybe it is just the power of suggestion, or maybe it’s something else, but Halloween night has always carried a charge for me–it just feels different, whether you’re on the street with a bucket of candy, holed up in the house with a pumpkin beer or out in the woods. It’s said that the veil between the worlds is thinnest on Halloween night, and I’m willing to buy that, because somehow the air always feels full of potential.

This Halloween night, I was camping at 6,300 feet in the Angeles National Forest. The weather in Los Angeles has continued depressingly hot and clear and dry, despite the arrival of autumn. On Halloween evening, though, clouds gathered in the sky, obscuring the relentless blue. Around twilight  those clouds dropped. They just fell straight down from the sky, as if someone cut their strings, and they turned into a sort of high fog with feathery, creeping tentacles exploring the tops of the pines and the cypress. And those creeping clouds drifted ever lower as the light faded, and a breeze kicked up, which sent the golden leaves on the ground a-dancing. I sat by the fire, looking down a long path lined with swirling leaves, shivering bushes and tendrils of fog and waited to see a fairy, or maybe a Black Rider.

Then the daylight vanished abruptly, like someone turning out an overhead light.  Fifteen minutes later, I couldn’t find my hand in front of my face. Darkness swallowed everything whole.  We read scary stories by the campfire and ate apples baked in the coals.

Late that night, after I was safely tucked in my bag, rain started to fall. The first significant rain of the year, the first significant rain in maybe 9 months or so. All night long the wind in the trees roared and boomed–it sounded like waves crashing on rocks. The rain sheeted down on my tent while the wind shook the sides.  (A five year old tent which has never been tested in the rain–that’s SoCal camping for you!). It did not leak, thank the Great Pumpkin.

I have to say, I have never been happier on any Halloween.

At dawn I woke up to a world soggy and remade. The rain had carved deep channels and rivulets in the hard-packed soil. The scrubby, hard-bitten plants eking out their living on the granite slopes shimmered in the morning light, free of dust for the first time in months, revealing their true and gentle colors.

I heard water and ran to the stream bed. The day before it had been dry, now it ran with water. I knew it was a temporary flow, but the sight of running water after a long dry summer brought tears to my eyes, and I remembered that Halloween is the Celtic New Year. It’s a time of darkness, and a time of death (the traditional time for slaughtering stock), but in death there is renewal, and I felt that renewal in the moist loam beneath my feet and the cheerful dripping of the trees, and I heard it in the water, and I gave thanks for the rain.

And an hour later, it began to snow.

snow on pine trees

Checking in on Kelly’s projects

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Miscellaneous
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tote bag

Today a tote bag, tomorrow the world!

Okay, so this is not the most useful post for the world at large, but I figure that when I mention on the blog that I’m going to try to learn something new, I should report back, to stay honest.

Mattress making:  My post on mattress making has, surprisingly, turned out to be one of our most popular posts ever. I think that shows there’s just a wee bit of dissatisfaction with our available mattress options. (Note that the post has been updated with linkage to an interesting how-to pdf).

Here at home, however, we’re still sleeping on our old mattress. We turned it again and found a side which doesn’t bother my back so much, so this very ambitious project has gone on hold until the crisis arises again. Making a mattress is intimidating, just because of the sheer cost and scale of the materials needed, and as far as I can tell, there’s no one out there to help you do it.  If I ever do make a mattress, it will be like summiting the Everest of homesteading. On the other hand, if I ever learn how, I think I could make a mint teaching other desperate people how to do it themselves!

Shoe making: Shoes are as ambitious as mattresses in their way, and very hard to get your head around. Fortunately I’m going to be taking that turn shoe class I posted about a while back.

I’ve finally realized that I am not a lone wolf when it comes to learning new things. I know people who’ve made beautiful shoes just by figuring them out in their head. I don’t have that kind of head. I like and need teachers. So from now on, I’m just cutting to the chase, kissing the confusing Internet and 70’s how-to books goodbye, and seeking out teachers. (Yes, and it is ironic, being that I’m an Internet how-to teacher.) As of October, I should have my first pair of homemade shoes.

Sewing my uniform: Sewing is also a hard-earned skill, and history has proven I’m no natural born seamstress. Yet, I want my uniform. So instead of blinking stupidly at patterns and sewing books, I’m getting some professional help here, too. I took a “meet the sewing machine” class this week at Sew LA, figuring it could not hurt to start over from scratch. I came out of it with the tote bag you see above–and I only screwed up the bobbin feed three times while making it. Yay me and my special bobbin confusing abilities! Very soon I’ll follow up with a basic skirt class or something similar. I’m on the road to being a crazy homemade dress lady, shod in medieval shoes.

Surfing:  Why do I keep choosing hard things to do??? Some small progress. I have been out a few times. I have been up. (Once. Or twice.) I really like it. And truly, I enjoy falling into the water over and over and over again, and it’s a good thing I do, because for me, surfing is mostly about that. A big shout out to my friend Ellie for being my surf mentor. Thank you, also, to everyone who offered to take me out when I first posted about it! None of you are safe yet: I may come knocking on your door soon as I’m out of the whitewater.

Natural dyes/Shibori/Indigo:  This has been a lost cause as a solo project. I’ve blogged about my plant dye failures. The furthest I got toward my own indigo was collecting a huge amount of urine in a bucket, which I then had to dispose of when it became clear I was not going to turn it into dye. Pouring out all that stale urine, I had one of those out of body moments in which I realized that normal people don’t deal with urine quite as I do.

Yet there’s hope for me still.  Some of you may recall when we posted about our friend Graham’s indigo project. He’s crowd-sourced indigo growing, and has promised some sort of community dyeing fiesta for the growers at harvest time, which should be soon.  Graham is a wizard with natural dyes and shibori technique, so any time spent working with him over a dye vat is time well spent. We’re growing three indigo plants for him, and I’m looking forward to harvesting and dyeing. I suspect that if I take dyeing up more actively, it will be after I get better at sewing.

Pottery:  I did not post about this, but I got it into my head that I wanted to learn ceramics, so I can make ollas, a clay tippy tap, a clay rocket stove, and in my wildest dreams, beautiful earthy modernist ceramics like those sold by Heath Ceramics.  I took a  wheel class earlier this summer, and I was the sorriest potter in the entire class. I am not being modest. It was embarrassing. All around me people were raising beautiful pots on their wheels and I just got lots of clay in my hair. In the end I came home with three wonky, heavy bowls that a kindergartener would shun. I’m making the cats eat out of them.

But I’m getting back on the clay horse, because I’ve never failed at anything that I actually thought, going in, that I’d be pretty good at. To be sure, I’ve tried many things which I knew I’d be hopeless at, and so was not surprised when I sucked. But with pottery, I feel like I should be able to get the hang of it, because I’m good at sculpture and plastering and that kind of thing–additive processes. In other words, I’m good at building things out of gunk. But then again, the wheel is really it’s own thing, and not an additive process at all. At any rate, I’m going to try again, at a different clay studio. I didn’t mesh well with the teacher at the first place, so a change might help.

***

Looking at this list, I’m realizing that I do have a tendency to choose ambitious projects. (Ya think???) All of these arts require a great deal of commitment and skill and time just gain competency, and any one could absorb a lifetime of devotion. So, I know I won’t do it all. The interesting question, though, is which of them will stick, and what will I learn along the way?