Search Results for: label/solar/page/10/2011/04/making-it

406 results

Broom Corn–or is it Broomcorn?

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Gardening
18 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: This summer I suggested we plant broom corn for no other good reason than I saw the seed pack at the nursery and thought it would be fun to make a broom. (This sort of temporary insanity often overtakes me in the seed aisle.) So without knowing anything at all about broom corn or broom making we planted a block of the stuff. Maybe I should have done a little research into broom making before planting, but I let it slide ...

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Another Panel Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Solar
3 Comments
Poyourow demoing her solar cooker design There’s no one size fits all solution when it comes to the world of solar panel cookers. All have their advantages and disadvantages. I got an email from author Joanne Poyourow, leader of the amazing Los Angeles Environmental Change Makers, with a simple and effective design she came up with. Pouyourow’s cooker comes together much faster than the CooKit design that I blogged about earlier th...

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CooKit Solar Cooker Made Out of Wood

Mr. Homegrown
Solar, Water and Power
6 Comments
The nice folks at Solar Cookers International gave us permission to reprint plans for their CooKit solar cooker in our book Making It. You can access those plans, as well as many other solar cooker projects, for free, on their website here. I’ve made CooKits out of cardboard and aluminum foil a couple of times. One problem is that I eventually bang up the cardboard and I’ve got to make a new one. This summer I had a lot of  1/4 inc...

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Camping and Solar Cooking

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Solar
7 Comments
...cargo bike (the amazing Xtracycle) and biking to our destination, all the while carrying almost as much as we would car camping. After rolling into our campground, we’ll spend the weekend kicking back at the campsite, taking it easy and pretty much not going anywhere or doing anything. With the carrying capacity of the cargo bike, we can get fancy with the food and libations, allowing us to skip the usual dehydrated camping chow. These sittin’ a...

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Build a Ghetto Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Solar, Water and Power
RLeave a comment
Using crap we had laying around the homestead, SurviveLA fashioned a solar cooker based on plans from Backwoods Home Magazine, the Dwell of the Ted Kaczynski set. We just substituted an old cooler for the cardboard boxes, and we finished it off by using one of Los Angeles’ ubiquitous abandoned car tires as a cradle to keep the cooker oriented towards the sun. It ain’t pretty but it works. In our first test we reached 160º inside the...

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Saturday Linkages: Making Things and Herding Ducks

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
1 Comment
ngboing.net/2012/08/15/new -video-series-from-make.html  … Inspired By. . . SunRay Kelley http:// lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2012/08/inspir ed-by-sunray-kelley.html#.UCwiEif7Ek0.twitter  … Cooking and Preserving Canning 101: Learning to be Flexible http://www. foodinjars.com/2012/08/cannin Step Up the S’more: 7 Ideas for Campfire Treats by Chris Rochelle: Chocolate Cake Baked in an Orange http://www. chow.com/galleries/315/ step-up-t...

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Low Tech Solar Heating with a Thermosyphon Collector

Mr. Homegrown
Solar, Water and Power
2 Comments
Yet another great post from the folks at Build It Solar: a simple and low tech solar heating system called a thermosyphon collector mounted in the wall of a garage. It uses the same principle as the solar dehydrator we have on our garage roof–basically it’s just some clear plastic and a heat collector made out of black window screen. If your climate is cold and sunny (think Colorado) this would work nicely. Read the post to see a r...

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Making Salves, Lip Balms & etc.: Close of the Calendula Series

Mrs. Homegrown
Body Care, Calendula series, Domesticus, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, How-to
21 Comments
...an also use essential oils to bring herbal essences into a plain salve.  Once you know how to make salve, you can not only make skin salves, you can make lip balm and headache balm and stick deodorant and homemade cosmetics. It’s a simple technique, but it opens a lot of possibilities. My favorite herbal salve is made out of a mix of equal parts Calendula (pot marigold), chickweed (Stellaria media) and plantain (Plantago major) oils. These...

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The Whip: A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It

Mrs. Homegrown
Calendula series, Domesticus, Herbs
98 Comments
A quick little project: lavender infused moisturizer, two Calendula/plantain salves and a chamomile infused lip balm. Enough unguents to see me through Christmas. Note 3/16/13: When I posted this I never expected this to become one of our most popular posts.  Since so many people are looking at this recipe, I feel like I should let you know a couple of things about it before you try it. 1) The first is that it is not perfect. I love it...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
3 Comments
We’ve got a bad case of Ohrwurm, a German expression translated as “earworm” and used to describe a song stuck in your head. Our earworm came after a search for union made socks and underwear on the internets recalled a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company c...

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