Dandelion Harvest

This afternoon, my son helped me with our dandelion harvest (or as it's more commonly known, weeding).

Dandelions can be quite a pain obviously, since if left unattended they will take over your whole garden. They do have many uses though, which partly makes up for their overbearing nature.

The whole plant is great for your liver, kidneys and digestion. The bitter leaves can be used in soups and salads, as can the flower petals. The flowers can also be used for yellow dye. The roots can be made into a wonderful decoction.

A decoction is like tea, but you simmer it for 25-45  minutes instead of just steeping in hot water. The extra heat and time helps extract the healing properties from the more fibrous plant materials.

I like to make a decoction of licorice root, dandelion root, milk thistle and fennel seed for liver support.

Happy New Year! Plus Cold Remedies!

I've been very neglectful of this blog lately. I won't make a resolution to update more often, because those things are so difficult for me to keep - but I will try to follow through a little more on this in the future.

2014 has been a very rough year for me and many people I know. Solstice is a lovely new beginning, and I treated it as such - but there is something special about the New Year also; a culturally agreed upon time to look back, put away the things that no longer serve us and start again fresh with renewed hope. Many wonderful things happened this past year, but it also was a year of things breaking and falling apart. Fortunately I am as yet unbroken.

The days have already started getting lighter, but the cold of winter will be upon us for quite some time. In case you need it, here are my favorite cold-weather sniffles remedies.

Thyme cough syrup: Take at least 3 tablespoons of thyme (fresh or dry) and add to 2 cups water. Simmer for 10 minutes, then let sit at low heat uncovered for one hour or until liquid is reduced to about a cup. Add about 3 tablespoons of raw honey and stir until disolved.

Cayenne sniffle and cough syrup: Juice of 1 lemon, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon raw honey, dash of cayenne pepper. Mix the ingredients together and stir on low heat until the honey is disolved.

You can store both kinds of cough syrup in a glass jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.

Take them by the tablespoonfull. The cayenne one packs a punch, and will clear out your sinuses real good if you add enough cayenne. Both kinds contain natural anti-bacterials and immune system support.


Enjoy the cold and dark of winter. I will be doing the same.

 

Black Walnut from Yellowood

I have some of the coolest friends! I know people who are up to some very interesting things. My friend Cayce and her roommate Elise are urban homesteaders raising chickens and vegetables on Yellowood Farm here in Seattle. Their commitment to ethically raising their chickens for eggs and meat, sustainable farming, and respect for their animals and the land is heartwarming and inspiring. In fact, they are the winners of the Seattle Tilth Chicken Coop and Urban Farm Tour Frugal Urban Farmer award for 2014, which is very neat.

Last year I attended a Cockerel Farewell party at Yellowood, to celebrate the shortish lives of their roosters before culling. It was such a fun, welcoming, warm, homey party - it was a wonderful way to get together as a community and show respect and gratitude for food we receive from the land. It's so easy to take meat for granted and be disconnected from its source when you buy it in a store. Not so when you are meeting the rooster who will soon become Thanksgiving dinner for the denizens of Yellowood.



Elise, me, and friends and family at the Cockerel Farewell

One other thing Yellowood has, aside from chickens and veggies, is a walnut tree! This, I am told, is a bit of a nuisance on the farm, as it attracts hungry squirrels who launch walnuts into the chicken coop and are generally not the most pleasant creatures to share space with. However, it was very relevant to my interests since black walnut husks are wonderful for natural dying, yielding a lovely rich brown. I brought Cayce a jar of the blackberry jam I made over the summer, and in exchange I left with a whole bucket of walnuts. Also, I got to hang out with Cayce and some chickens. Well worth a jar of jam, in my opinion.

Yarn dyed with black walnut



Many Mitts

I just published two new patterns on Ravelry! Hooray! Siouxsie Gloves and Snow Flurries are now live - and free! The cold is coming on and it's going to be mitt weather before you know it. ♡♡♡♡♡♡

Gifts of Late Summer

Life can be difficult. My life is a bit complicated and stressful right now, what with my partner's serious injury, and my regular responsibilities continuing uninterrupted - even though dammit, sometimes I just want to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. In spite of this, I remain receptive to life's gifts, and life continues to provide spontaneous treasures and joy.

For example, my fig tree produced a lovely crop, most of which we were able to harvest. The critters took their share, but unlike years past they actually left some for us too! Hooray!  I cooked up a batch of fig jam. It is yummy and it makes me feel fancy.

Another unexpected gift came from one of my wonderful friends. I received a just-because-gift of a delicious skein of alpaca yarn. I asked it what it wanted to be, and it said it wanted to be a simple hat. It is so dreamy and soft. I think I will be wearing it a lot this winter. Even in hard times, there is so much to be grateful for.

Urban Foraging

Today I explored an undeveloped hillside by my house, and found that it was absolutely overgrown with blackberries and tansy. Double score!

The blackberries will become more jam. More jam! All the jam! I will dye yarn with the tasty.

I left plenty of berries for the birds, and lots of flowers for the bees. Even in the city, the land bears wonderful treasures. I will harvest these with gratitude, using the gifts of the earth to feed my body and soul.

Self Preservation

It is the height of summer and everything is blooming, ripening, and flowering. There is so much fruit and so many useful and edible plants growing that you can't possibly use all of them. So now is the time for preservation projects! I have made two batches of blackberry jam so far, and plan to make a couple more. The figs and plums aren't quite ripe yet, but when they are I will be making jam from them also. I'm pickling beets and turnips, making sauerkraut, and I've harvested herbs from my yard and hung them up to dry. My kitchen looks like a witch's lair!

The other, less exciting thing that is happening with me right now is that my boyfriend is in the hospital with two broken heels. He will be in the hospital for quite some time, he will have reconstructive surgery on his heel bones and then he will be in a wheelchair for several months. At times like these it is very easy to get so wrapped up in caring for another person that I forget to take care of myself. Now is the time that I need to be especially aware of self-care. Last night, for me, self-care looked like going to the Dead Baby Downhill. The Dead Babies are a bicycle club, and the Downhill is a bicycle race followed by an after-party that takes up an entire neighborhood. There are many bands, many friends, many bicycles, many freak bicycles and many wheeled, bicycle-like contraptions. It was good to be around my people, and good to be somewhere other than a hospital room or home by myself.

Wonderfully, I unexpectedly ran into Caitlin Ffrench of We Will Tell You All Of Our Secrets who is a fiber artist and designer based in Vancouver BC Canada. I had heretofore only interacted with her online. She was just as wonderful and charming in real life as her online presence would suggest. I am a fan of her designs, as a visit to my Ravelry finished projects page will attest. It was great to meet her and talk about natural dyeing and our cats.

I'm feeling very fortunate today to have such a full life and be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

Tuesday Adventures

I know some people may go on adventure of a Tuesday afternoon all the time, but (much like Dolly Parton before me) I'm usually working 9 to 5. However, yesterday I took the day off and went with a friend and our kids to Remlinger Farms. It's a small amusement park near the foothills of the Cascade Mountain range. My friend Jolene has a daughter who is about the same age as my son, and they are buddies. Mom friend/kid friend combos are the best for going to amusement park outings. A good time was had by all.

Anyway,  Remlinger Farms is right down the road from Tolt Yarn and Wool, so of course we had to stop there before we started for home. I picked up a ball of Rowan Tweed, which is going to become Glenveagh Mitts from the Fall 2014 issue of Knitscene a ball of Twirl Petals, which is going to join a lighter ball of Twirl that I picked up the last time I was at Tolt and become an original design that's percolating in my brain; and three balls of YOTH, two Big Sister and one Little Brother. I don't have any designs on the YOTH right now, but it's just such gorgeous yarn and you can't really get it anywhere else so of course I had to grab some.

My friend's daughter noticed a waste basket full of scrap yarn under the ball winder. She asked if she could have some. She ended up coming home with a whole bag of scrap yarn - ask and you shall receive!

THEN my car battery died because I'm an idiot, and Veronika, the force behind YOTH Yarn and a lovely human gave me a jump and saved the day. It was quite funny. The whole shop was willing to help. It made me love Tolt even more!

Now it's back to work and back to reality for me. The weather outside is gloom and rain, and while there are some who would be disappointed by this, I will always be in favor of July days that feel like September. It makes my heart happy.

Summer Doings

I have neglecting this blog! Bad blogger! I had committed to myself to update it at least once a week, but I have been doing many wonderful summer things and it got away from me. Summer things that weren't really within the scope of this blog and also I'm terrible about pausing in the middle of adventures to take pictures. So. No photographic evidence. You'll just have to take my word for it.

This morning I was walking to the train and I saw some plantain growing in a neighbor's yard. Not the kind that looks like a big banana - the kind that's a weed that grows in your lawn. For some reason I don't have any growing in my lawn so I took some seeds from the plant in my neighbor's yard and sprinkled them on the edge of my back garden. Hopefully they will sprout and soon they will look like this:

If you live anyplace where dandelions grow, you are probably familiar with these guys. They are everywhere where I live. Except my lawn, mysteriously.

Plantains are a great edible plant, and you can also make a healing salve from the leaves. To make a salve, simply fill a jar 3/4 full of plantain leaf and then pour in olive oil to cover. Let it sit for 4 weeks, then strain the oil and mix with melted bee's wax. The salve will help stanch bleeding and reduce healing time. You can also put mashed up leaves on bug bites to speed healing and relieve itch.

Plantain leaves are edible, though they can be bitter and stringy once the plant is older. Younger leaves can be eaten in a salad. Mature leaves can be used for tea, or you could toss them in a green smoothie. Plantain is nutrient dense and really great for the liver and for digestion.

I love useful weeds!

Solstice

Happy Solstice! Or happy belated Solstice, I should say. Obviously I am posting this on Monday and it is no longer Solstice. The days have already started getting shorter.

But I do want to tell you about how I welcomed summer this year because it was quite lovely. I am more of a cool weather type person, but summer does have its good points. For instance: lots of light and many growing things.

Saturday I tended my garden, played outside with my son, harvested dye plants, finished my Sunlight Shawl for Sad People (I've got it blocking right now), and ate strawberries straight out of the garden. Perfection!

Sunday I spent cleaning my house and dyeing yarn. I have two wonderful pieces of news: the fig tree in my yard is healthy and growing and had lots of leaves to use for dyeing,  AND whatever was eating all my figs in years past has apparently moved on - there are still a ton of figs left and I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch but it looks like we might get a harvest this year!

I don't have a fancy camera, and unfortunately I had trouble capturing the color with my camera phone, but the fig leaves with alum and iron yielded a very cool variegated spring green and mossy green.

Calendula Conundrum

I had planted calendula in my garden specifically for use as a dye plant. However, I've been having problems with dry, itchy skin and I finally said enough! So I'm making calendula oil instead.

Calendula is wonderful for skin irritation of all sorts. I will let is soak in olive oil for a couple of weeks, then mix it with bee's wax and lavender essential oil for a healing and soothing skin salve. The lavender essential oil not only smells good, but also has anti bacterial and anti fungal properties. The finished salve will be good for rashes, dry skin, burns, and cuts. Calendula oil mixed with bee's wax also makes a great lip balm.

I struggled with the decision to use my calendula for medicinal purposes at first, but I decided that there are many plants I can dye with (especially at this time of year) but not so many that are so good for the skin. Anyway, calendula is a prolific plant so I will have other harvests this summer.

I figure that if deciding whether to use a flower for dying yarn or making salve is the problem I'm having today, then life is pretty good.

Two Patterns

I designed two shawlette/scarf patterns and they are now live on Ravelry. They are the first original designs that I've sent out into the world. They are my baby birds and they are now free, which is exciting and a little nervous-making.

They are Wolf Lichen and Back Garden. Please check them out!

New cardigan

I made this cardigan for the Very Shannon Tops, Tanks and Tees Knit Along. The knit along happens every spring and the idea is to make something you could wear in warm weather. It was a great excuse to make this cute short sleeved Peggy Sue cardigan.

I am very proud of myself because even though I didn't get started until the knit along was halfway over, I still finished by the deadline. Yay me!

Stitch Markers!

I'm obsessed with fancy stitch markers! First I purchased some really cool ones from Fitcher's Bird, and then today I made some of my own with pieces of moonstone and lapis lazuli. I'd had the stones for a while and hadn't known what to do with them. I think they work nicely as stitch marker adornments.

Gray Ivy

Sunday I spent the day dyeing, preserving herbs from my garden, and working on a sweater. I also watched American Hustle, which was very good.

I dyed yarn with Ivy berries that I picked throughout the neighborhood, with an iron mordant solution added directly to the dyebath. It turned out a nice medium warm gray. Mordants are so magic to me. Adding a mineral to plant matter can shift and in some cases (like ivy berries, which yields yellow without the addition of iron) change the color altogether.

If you're interested in learning more about the iron solution, I got the recipe from the wonderful We Will Tell You All Of Our Secrets blog.

Making potions with poison berries and rust seemed like something Snow White's evil stepmother might have done, which I liked.

As I was dyeing, I was overcome with an intense feeling of gratitude for the women who preserved the knowledge of natural dyeing - the women who, when the world said "this knowledge is obsolete" answered "no, this knowledge is valuable." The women who kept their legacy, and passed it down to those who were willing to receive it.

Of The Moon Shawl

I'm very into knitting shawls these days. They are such fun to make.

Not just for old ladies anymore!

This Of The Moon pattern is by Caitlin Ffrench, and is wonderfully simple and satisfying.

♥♥♥♥

These skeins dyed with logwood and madder are drying on my porch right now! 

Some of it is variegated!

My fig tree this morning

I looked out my kitchen window this morning and found that my fig tree is covered in many tiny baby figs. There are more figs than any one family could possibly eat. Which won't be a problem because if years past are any indication we will get exactly none of them.

The critters in the neighborhood aren't very good about sharing.

At least I can use the leaves to dye with.

Black Bean Dye!

Isn't it just the best when you can make use of something that would usually be thrown away? It's like discovering a treasure under your bed or something.

Today's treasure is the water that turns all bluish dark color when you soak dried black beans overnight. The beans become dinner and the soaking water becomes a dye bath.

I had seen pictures of other people's black bean dyed yarns, and so I was expecting mine to come out as a member of the blue family. However, natural dyes do not always play by my rules. They play by the rules of science, which can sometimes seem indistinguishable from the rules of magic.

Hence, my yarn came out a purplish brownish color. It looks brown in some lights, and rather lavender in others. It's quite pretty, but I will continue to play with heat, mordants and ph, and I'm sure I will get the black beans to do many more things.

Horsetail

Horsetail! It's everywhere! It makes sense that it's so abundant, it's a survivor - it's been around since 100 million years before there were dinosaurs! Super cool!

It is also a useful herb and dye plant - and its abundance (some consider it a weed) makes it a great plant for sustainably-minded dyers and herbalists to forage without worry of negative environmental impact. Just make sure to harvest when the leaves have spread out in their characteristic tail-like formation; that means that they have had a chance to release their pollen.

Horsetail yeilded a nice soft brown in my dye pot, and it is also a welcome addition to my teapot.

Horsetail is rich in silicon, which is good for skin, bones, blood vessels and connective tissue. Add small amounts of the stems and leaves of horsetail (harvested in a clean area) to tea blends or soups to reap the benefits of this amazing plant!

(However, horsetail is not recommended for people who are pregnant or nursing or have kidney disease)