Gold Birds Singing Potholder. One of my Evergreen Bird Potholders, for sale here.
All the colors that I see when I walk in the woods and look out my studio window are in my Evergreen Bird Potholders.
The sage green of lichen, the golden leaves and red berries and branches. The birds are reproduction designs by Willam Morris, scraps given to me that I used once in a quilt. These the are the last of them. The rest of the fabric are scraps too. Sent to me in plastic baggies, that I sort through, mix and match.
I have nine Evergreen Bird Potholders for sale in my Etsy Shop. They are $25 each + $5 shipping for one or more. You can see them all and buy them here.
My Evergeeen Bird Potholders for sale in my Etsy Shop.
Zip came down from the hay loft this morning, one of his favorite places to spend a rainy night.
As the rain turned to snow the sheep, donkeys and chickens gathered in the pole barn. A place that is dry and sheltered from the wind.
Now the snow is beginning to stick, frosting the grass and trees, making the day even cozier. Jon and I are roasting half a chicken for dinner then we’ll gather in the living room and read by the wood stoves while the dogs sleep close by.
In a way we’re doing the same thing as the rest of the animals on the farm.
I’m not sure about the meaning of Thanksgiving for me. It seems to be so much about visiting family and eating good food. I suppose Jon and I are doing the same, it’s just that our family is smaller and there’s no need to travel to be together.
I do know that the Cambridge Food Pantry has the opportunity to get some canned vegetables on their shelves. Something that isn’t available to them often. Jon wrote about it on his blog. So if you’re looking for another way to celebrate the holiday, you can buy a pack of 12 cans of Veg-All for the sale price of $19.58 just click here. They’re healthy and taste good too.
I have a lot to be grateful for, including all of you reading this and that the root canal I had yesterday went really well. It was completed in just two hours and all the pain and sensitivity I’ve had in that tooth for so long, is now gone.
I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving, in what ever way you celebrate it.
I chose lavender scent with a pink clay coloring. It took two weeks to cure but then Jon and I each got a bag with the soap we made.
It came out beautifully. Just as creamy as the bars of soap we regularly buy from Cindy.
I’d forgotten about the little bit of wool that Cindy asked me for until she gave me the little white sheep. Cindy’s friend made the sheep and that’s Sock’s wool on the face and feet.
Most of Cindy’s goats aren’t milking right now because they’re pregnant. So Cindy didn’t have any goat cheese at the Farmers Market today, but she still has soap, as well as lotions and lip balm (the lip balm works wonderfully and lasts a long time).
You can see and buy all of Cindy’s goat milk soaps and lotions for sale on her website cazacrez.com. Just click here. She working hard to keep soap in stock and updates her inventory every Wednesday.
On Tuesday we brought Zip to the Vet to get his vaccinations.
I’d been working on getting him comfortable in the cat carrier by throwing treats into it. But in the days leading up to the visit to the Vet, Zip wouldn’t go into the carrier to eat the treats when I was in the barn.
He’d wait for me to leave then eat them. I know because the treats would be gone the next day.
So when he didn’t go into the carrier on Tuesday, I picked him up and tried to put him in. But he was having none of it and squiggled out of my grip and took off.
Out of the barn and under the gate he flew. I knew he ran into the pole barn even though I couldn’t see him because all the sheep came running out as if they were being chased by a bear.
Zip was already on the other side of the fence, hiding in the marsh when I caught up with him. But he was hiding in plain sight, just a few feet from me.
So I squatted down and gently talked to him.
He played hard to get for about thirty seconds, then started flirting, rolling on his back and rubbing his head against the fence. Not long after he walked into my arms.
I picked him up in one arm and held him by the scruff of the neck with my other hand. He settled down until he saw the crate, but I was ready for him and eased him into the crate with enough confidence that he gave in.
I thought it might take him a while to forgive me, but once we were at the Vet, after cuddling with Jon, he leaned into my arms while Dr Roosevelt checked his ears, teeth and eyes.
After getting all his shots, Zip was more than happy to go back into the crate.
Zip doesn’t hold a grudge and now I have another whole years to try and get him comfortable with the crate again. I don’t know if it will work, but I’ll keep at it. Maybe he’ll forget all about associating the crate with the Vet.
I don’t quite it. The video I posted a few days ago of KittyAnne jumping out of the chicken coop was watched 15,000 times on YouTube.
It’s only a few seconds long and its just a hen jumping off a roost. I image there are many videos on YouTube just like it.
I have to admit, I do enjoy looking at my videos to see which get the most views. I don’t see any evidence that it translates to more people visiting my blog. But I find that I like being able to create a video, that speaks to the everyday of life in a positive way, that people want to watch.
Kim up front. In the back is Constance, Lori, Merricat, Robin and Suzy. And Liam behind them.
When I woke at 5:30am the bedroom was filled with daylight. I don’t know exactly when the sun rose, but it seemed like it had been up a while.
I was supposed to go on a walk-about with my friend Jackie, on this Summer Solstice, but it looked like we’d be walking in a downpour so we postponed till Friday. We decided we’d still have a Solstice ceremony of some kind though.
It hasn’t rained much here, but it’s been overcast all day. I think we’ll still be able to have our Solstice fire. We certainly have enough wood to burn. I’ve been piling it up in the barnyard and collecting cardboard to start it with since our Winter Solstice fire.
I also have some shavings of wood I saved from my Walk-About with Zach. We carved chopsticks out of a piece of cedar to eat our lunch with. (Although I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I used the chopsticks when I ate the Nettle greens we harvested for dinner that night.)
I collected the scraps to use in the Solstice Fire. I’m not sure why I did that really. I’m not certain of the connection between the two. But I think it has to do with coming closer to nature in a way I hadn’t before.
I’ll eat dinner with my chopsticks tonight.
Fate Checking out the chopsticks that I carved. They are really way too long but they still work. I waxed them coconut oil.
We weren’t long in the woods when Zach saw the pile of pine branches on the side of the trail. We stopped and he took out a pink-handled Mora knife from his wicker backpack.
He teaches kids all the time how to use knives and make fires. “Mostly,” he said, “they just want to be trusted.” He’s found that when you give them your trust, they are careful and responsible with both.
It made me think of our Amish neighbors and how their children are expected to work, with the rest of the family, from a very young age.
I watched as Zach cut a line around the pine branch, then another about 6 inches from the first. Then he cut another line into the bark connecting the two.
He slid his knife under the edge of the bark and lifted it up.
It separated from the branch surprisingly easily. When he couldn’t find the blunt tool in his backpack he wanted to use to remove the rest of the bark, he broke off another smaller branch removed the bark, and sliced the top of the branch to make a wedge.
Using his fingers and the wedge he removed the piece of bark. It came off in one piece. Then I did the same with another branch, making the cuts and using my fingers and the wedge to peel back the bark.
The smell of pine seeped into the air and my fingers were sticky with sap. Although I’ve seen bark baskets before and heard of Native Americans peeling bark off of living trees without damaging them, I could never quite understand how it worked.
Now I knew.
shaping the pine bark
After the bark was free from the branch Zach showed me how to fold the corners to shape the bark into a small vessel. But we didn’t have the clothes pins needed to hold the corners in place, so he let the bark roll up as it naturally did and put it in his backpack for later.
It wasn’t until we got back to the trailhead, where conveniently there were some picnic tables and another pile of pine branches waiting for us, that we finished making the pine vessels.
First, we had to make some clothespins to hold the folded sides in place.
Zach found a couple of branches just the right size and we cut them up into pieces about 4 -5 inches long. Each piece had a knot on the top. Then he placed the knife legnthwise at the center of the bottom of the branch and hit the handle lightly with the side of his hand. The knife easily sunk into the tip of the branch and with little taps, it moved down the branch splitting it until it reached the knot which stopped it from being split completely in two.
A couple of the clothes pins we made
Then we folded the sides of the pine bark and put the clothes pins on the ends to hold it in place until it dried.
The bark vessels drying with the clothes pins holding the folded ends.
It wasn’t until the next day that I could remove the pine bark and the folded ends stayed in place. I’m not sure what I’ll use them for yet. But I can imagine myself collecting bark in this way and making more of them. Before they dry Zach said they’re easy to sew through too.
There was something so simple and almost familiar about peeling the bark from the pine branch and then reshaping it to make the small vessels.
Maybe it’s the sculptor in me. Or maybe is just a part of being human. Like working with clay or weaving. Humans have been doing it for so long that I can’t help believe it’s still a part of us lying dormant, waiting to awake again.
