Adventures With Fabric & A New Tool

Hello, friends.  I hadn't intended to stay away so long, but life got busy.  I worked several days at the gallery, shop sitting for friends.  As we never did make it to the coast in the skoolie this year, we decided to go to our happy place in Atlantic Beach.  It was lovely to get away, and recharge for a few days.  I enjoyed the six week sewing class.  They do a new class about every two months.  I'd take the next one, but once days start getting short, I have no desire to be heading somewhere after dark, lol.  Tucked in at home is where I want to be, during the cold, dark evenings.  Once spring is on the horizon, I plan to take another set of classes.  Besides the Singer machine I bought secondhand years ago, I had my Mom's Brother.  It's a good thing, because the Singer jammed up during the second class, and parts took several weeks to arrive.  The Brother also had a challenge, because it had sat for so long, but after J checked it out and oiled it, I was able to use it for the remainder of the classes.

Not long ago, a video came into my feed, with a gardener praising and demoing a little wood chipper.  Though we have the large, gas-powered one, J doesn't like to use it, and I knew I could handle this one on my own, so I purchased it.  It works great for me, and I've been happy to clear the yard of some limbs, and get chips around a number of plants and trees.  Mine was less than the current price.  $50 of OTC items were ordered and received, provided quarterly thru insurance.  Summer squash, glazed carrots and black beans have been canned.  Beets were harvested, and the smallest ones were cubed, pickled and canned for salads.  The usual fall chores were accomplished, including the great houseplant migration, washing windows, and changing out sheets and clothes to cold weather ones. 

Broccoli, cucumbers, summer and winter squash, peppers, eggplant, figs, pears and tomatoes were harvested.  The lemongrass was harvested, the plants divided and put into pots for the winter, along with the ginger.  Our hoop house has been in growing shade the past few years, so J decided he'd move it to the main garden.  It now holds 5 of our raised beds, plus two more partial beds. We sifted compost, and added half a 5 gallon bucket to each bed, got all plants in the ground, and J seeded winter salad.  I fed all plants with a mix of compost extract and fish emulsion.  We had just got the majority of the plants in the ground, when we got over 3.5" of rain.  What a blessing.  We still have to cover the hoop house with plastic, but at the moment, there's no frost in the coming two weeks' forecast.  

I picked up organic lemons, not available locally, on my monthly trip to Harris Teeter.  With the zest, I made lemon pepper, which is used in the black bean burger recipe I make, and made lemon rice.  The apple cider mix I tried was awful, because I bought the wrong thing... apple fiber instead of powder.  It of course didn't dissolve in water, so I'll use the mix in baked goods, and try again.  I may have mentioned I've been trying an indoor growing system, for winter greens.  The kinks are still being worked out.  If I have success with it, I'll be sure to share.  Lots of books have been requested from the library.  One of the chicken supply companies had an ad for an herbal molting blend.  I checked to see what was in it, and had everything here, so mixed up some, and have been adding it to their mash.  We've been giving away eggs left and right, so the flock is not very cost effective at the moment.

mordanted with pomegranate skins & dyed with yellow onion skins

J dug up elephant ears that had escaped their bed, and we transplanted them in beds at the road, while cleaning the beds and adding chips.  They look so much better.  We also reworked a bed near the power pole, which was torn up when they came through to do clearing around the lines this summer.  Our sunchokes have been languishing in encroaching shade for a few years.  I asked J to clear a patch for me, then dug them up and moved them to a sunnier spot in the pond garden.  We've not yet found a way we like to eat them, but their flowers are pretty, and it's hard to turn down perennial food.  I've been wanting to get back to plant dyeing, and finally did.  This time, I experimented with frozen avocado pits and skins (the dried ones were unimpressive), gifted eucalyptus, and yellow onion skins.  The end result was that the eucalyptus did very little, and though the avocado liquid turned a rosy pink, little to none transferred to fabric, and the onion skins came to the rescue once again.

mordanted with pomegranate skins, but not dyed

Being the avocado and eucalyptus experiments didn't pan out, I'm saving several of the pieces for a future plant dye experiment.  It has been a long road, getting the skoolie road worthy for another trip.  J has worked really hard, on a multitude of things.  He changed the oil and filters over the weekend, and we hope we're getting close to being able to start crossing off places on our bucket list.