Lantana Handmade

When we have our colors added we can begin making the fiber into something we can use…in this case, Serenity has spun her wool, from a batt she crafted several years ago…
Did you know wool is VERY long keeping?

What about color?

Well, we’ve washed and ‘brushed’ our wool so where can we go from here?

As an avid gardener who loves to use the garden not just for food and medicine, I’ve made it a habit to include several types of flowers, vines and herbs that can also be used for color!

Enter solar dyeing…

By using a basic kitchen ingredient and some color rich garden additions we can harness the power of the HOT, HOT, HOT 🥵 days to ‘cook’ or set our dyes in our recycled jars to make some wonderful wooly wonder…

Homegrown Goodness…

If you’re looking for something with many uses to add to your garden that you plant ONCE and it comes back on its own, perhaps it’s time to grab some Egyptian Walking Onions!
Grown here on our beyond organic, past regenerative, homestead…(no chemicals were involved in their growth from start to finish and the soil building has been happening for over 3 years…)
These pungent beauties are useful now to get some fresh onion greens into your dinners while they work to grow the larger, stronger bulbs that you will enjoy later.
Swing on by our handmade homestead store and see what’s been happening to get some for your garden, today!

We also have fresh Perilla Mint & Apple Mint as well as loads of black walnut saplings if you’re looking to build your food forest! 🌳

For the guys who were asking just last week, restock coming soon.
Get yours before others stock up! It’s a favorite because it works so well!!!

Pine Tar & Pumice will be back in stock before ya know it!🌲🪵

Continuing the fiber work…

After we have skirted and scoured our fleece, the sun ☀️ helped to dry and brighten it. So, what can we do from here?

Well, we have some options…
In this case I am going to share my carding adventures…
Typically you can use hand cards to brush & align your fibers so they are more uniformly prepared for spinning, the process of turning fiber into yarn 🧶. (Many museums and families in our area still have a pair of cotton carders used for preparing cotton- which has a much shorter staple length.) This also helps you work through the fiber up close and in smaller bits to remove hay, seeds, and vegetable matter - VM.

Sheep 🐑 can be messy with their dry hay, pick up dirt as they lounge, or become great collectors of tree needles as they rest in the shade. Alpacas🦙, love to roll in the dirt like a wet dog in the summer and play in the water with their legs too! Angora rabbits 🐰 are fantastic at getting all kinds of greens and hay in their super fine coats that can stick like Velcro. As you know, with any animal, they find a way to get dirty, don’t they?!

In this case, because we have always processed our own fibers for the decades we’ve raised fiber animals, after some years I had the funds to invest in a used, larger scale device called a drum carder. I had actually worked through an upgrade or two over those years and finally settled on The Kitten, a fine fiber, standard batt* making version. I learned from our experiences and different opportunities for raising a variety of fiber producers (and field trips to other farms & fiber events, and experiencing their fibers too) that fine fibers were the only ones I could stand wearing next to skin** and our focus has primarily been making items that were useful and wearable.

So, once again, I’ll let the pictures do the work and I hope this peek into homestead happenings helps you understand another aspect of fiber arts!

*batts are explained below
**sensitive skin is a big reason why we’ve always needed natural products in our lives. Serenity has carried that on in a wonderful way with her natural body care line here in the store…

Deuteronomy 7:13
And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

Deuteronomy 28:4
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

Lavender & Peppermint and Orange & Lemon Garden Luffa soaps available now! 👩‍🌾🪏🪴

That’s right, these bars are made with luffas that were grown here in my cottage garden, picked, dried & made into soap~ in my soap studio which is surrounded by that very same garden! :)

I absolutely love these bars, they’re so handy & are great for scrubbing away dirt and grime that tries to stay on with regular soap!