Seed Saver

I didn't take this picture, but if I did, I would frame it.

Last Fall I decided that I’m going to start saving seeds whenever I eat an especially good organic vegetable.  This despite not knowing if I’ll get a plot in my town’s Victory Gardens — which is so popular that there’s a waiting list.  But such a minor impediment of no garden space doesn’t deter this stouthearted plant killer.  Oh no.  I’m saving seeds.

I began with an exceptional butternut squash.  Its insides were the crisp, warm orange of a fall day, saturated beyond the limits of a my squashy dreams.  Did I get pictures?  No.  Were there butternut squash guts splattered across the counter as I separated out seeds?  Yes.  The SavvyRoomie was exasperated, but I know she loves me.   Mr. Savvy didn’t bat an eye.

I ate the heck out of that squash, then rinsed the seeds and let them dry for a few days on the counter, flipping them once.  Then I parked them in an envelope, labeled it, and packed everything away until Spring.

A few weeks later, a delicata squash called to me, and I dried those seeds too — on a plate on top of the refrigerator this time, so as not to harass the SavvyRoomie beyond her tolerances.  She loves me, but I can only go so far, you see.  Which is why it was funny that SavvyRoomie recovered my delicata squash seeds no less than three weeks later from the top of the fridge where I had forgotten them.

No matter.  Once again, I put the seeds into an envelope, labeled it, and put the delicata enveloped in with the… wait a second, where are the butternut squash seeds?

“What?” SavvyRoomie asked from over the top of her computer.

“The butternut squash seeds!  I put them in an envelope and put them right here,” I said, indicating the bookshelf basket full of junk that Mr. Savvy and I like to pretend contains office supplies.

“Are you sure?  Maybe they’re in the drawer with the computer cords,” SavvyRoomie said.  But she was giggling, because this is a typical conversation.  Mr. Savvy and I have only three places to put odds and ends in the house, and we lose them somewhere between the computer cords drawer and the bookshelf basket on a regular basis.  I don’t know how it happens.  SavvyRoomie finds it funny, but as a self-proclaimed minimalist, I am ashamed my friends.

I looked in the bookshelf basket again, then the computer cords drawer, then the potholders drawer (our third hiding place).  I took a quick swing through the bedroom, just in case, before admitting defeat.

“I guess they’re gone,” I told SavvyRoomie, and I lamented their loss because those seeds made up half of my future garden.  And now all I’d have to grow was delicata.

A few days later, I was hanging clothes to dry in the little room we use mostly for storage when I noticed something funny peering through the side of my plastic yarn bin.

Ah.  Because clearly that’s where butternut squash seeds go.  With the yarn.

Sometimes I wonder how I’m ever going to get this farm thing off the ground.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where my seed saving collection is whole once again, let the animals rejoice.  judy_and_ed took that first image, but I’m using it via a Creative Commons license.  The second image is mine.

 

Tags: butternut squash, farm, seeds

I made an impulse purchase because the moon hit my eye like a big pizza pie.

I made an impulse purchase this week of a real silk shawl from the thrift store.  It was $3.00.  (For some reason, I can’t talk about thrift store buys without mentioning the price too.)  I have taken to wearing it around my neck like a cowboy — a cowboy in a jelly bean shirt.

Why?  It says Napoli on it.

Not that I’ve ever been to Napoli.  But look at the scenery!  The paisley border!  The little people all tucked up in places I’ve never heard of!

What is that guy in front there doing, digging a ditch?

Well, it doesn’t matter.  I made an impulse purchase of a silk shawl because it made me want to sing the Dean Martin song That’s AMORE at the top of my lungs in a nearly empty thrift store — you know, the song that starts, In Napoli, where love is kiiiiiiing, when boy meets giiiiiiirl here’s what they saaaaaaay….

I took it as a sign from Mother Earth that if I owned this shawl, the world would not end.  In fact, in addition to not ending the world, it would expand my world because now I don’t have to buy so many new clothes.  I can use this lovely bit of probably-70s-era silk to spice up my wardrobe a notch (which works out well since half my clothes are falling apart.)(I’m allergic to buying new clothes).

And instead of me gushing about the scarf and ending the post, let’s direct my attention to how much thrifting rocks.  This scarf came with one tiny piece of plastic — the bit that attached the tag to the shawl.  It’s just my style, and I’m unlikely to see other people wearing it.  It was inexpensive.  This last one is less of an issue except that I got a better quality shawl for less money than I would have spent at the mall or any big box store.  Thrifting rocks!

Coincidentally, this is just what I said in Beth Terry’s new book Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.  That’s right — I have an interview in Beth Terry’s book.  Okay, it’s more like a cameo.  All right!  It’s really two lines.  Which means there are 499,998 other lines in the book worth reading.  So if you like my shawl, consider pre-ordering Beth Terry’s new book about living plastic free.  I haven’t read the book yet, but I know it will be good because the thought of a book on life without plastic is making the world shine like I’ve  had too much wine.  Now that, my friends, is amore.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I didn’t mean to write an impromptu propaganda post about living plastic free, but I guess this is what thrifting does to me.

 

Knitting Mojo

Check.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where yes, Ms. Beantown, that is the yarn you sent me in the swap, being used to finally make myself some fingerless mittens.  More information to come!  The thrummed mittens in the first picture can be found Raveled here.

Tags: fingerless mittens, thrummed mittens, yarn

Stink free natural deodorant

A while back, I gave up deodorant.  I don’t remember why — because I was concerned about the plastic packaging?  Or the chemicals in deodorant/antiperspirant?  I know over two years I tried a few natural brands like Schmom’s of Schmaine and then gave up on them too because they did not help me even begin to be stink free.  I toyed with making my own powdery deodorant out of baking soda and cornstarch — said to be the most powerful combination of homemade stench-resisting combinations — and that didn’t work either.

It got bad.  Some people don’t need to use deodorant because they don’t stink.  I am not one of them.  I had to reapply my powder multiple times per day, and when I gave up on it, I grossed myself out with the way I smelled.  It made me want to avoid everyone, even giving hugs at the end of normal, non-strenuous events like polite gatherings of friends.

I’m all about forgoing fragrance and realizing that some things are not going to smell good, and that’s okay.  When you have a dog who likes to play in muddy creeks and has had multiple episodes of gastrointestinal distress, you realize that there are far worse things than stench (like cleaning up the piles of poop from your carpet that make the stench).  But I stunk, and I couldn’t stand being around myself.  That’s when I knew it was time to do something.

I read a few recipes for homemade deodorant online, and then came up with one that works for me.  And not only does it work for me, it works for the other three people I conned into testing it for the last two months.  It will probably work for you, provided you’re not expecting it to help you stop sweating.  Let this be a disclaimer: this is not antiperspirant.  You will sweat when using this deodorant, but you won’t stink.  Probably.

As an added bonus, since using this deodorant my underarms have become very smooth. I can put this on right after I shave with no ill effects, which is more than I can say for the store-bought stuff I wore for years.  I attribute that to the vitamin E.

Stink free natural deodorant bar

Time estimate: 10 minutes of work, 1 hour of refrigeration. You will need:

• 3 spoonfuls of coconut oil
• 2 spoonfuls or approximately 0.5oz (12g) beeswax
• 2 spoonfuls of baking soda
• 2 vitamin E capsules (a natural preservative and a skin soother)
• tea tree oil
• microwaveable mixing bowl
• muffin tin
• microwave

1.  Put the coconut oil and beeswax into the microwaveable bowl.  It doesn’t matter whether or not you use teaspoons or tablespoons, so long as the ratio is approximately correct.  I used a regular spoon and eyeballed it because that’s how I roll.  If you’re curious, the coconut oil allows you to spread the final product smoothly, while the beeswax keeps it solid even in hot weather.

2.  Melt the beeswax and coconut oil in the microwave by putting the bowl in the microwave for 15 or 20 second intervals and stirring.  In fact, you don’t even need to stir, just swirl the mixture around in the bowl.  The coconut oil will melt very quickly; the beeswax will take longer, especially if you have larger chunks.  Keep at it.

3.  When the oil/beeswax mixture is fully melted, add the spoonfuls of baking soda.  Then pierce the vitamin E capsules and squeeze the contents into the bowl.  Add 2-5 drops of tea tree oil, and stir everything together.  Try not to get the tea tree oil on your skin because it’s very strong when it’s undiluted.  Tea tree oil has mild anti-bacterial and anti-mold properties, and as such, it irritates the airways too.

4.  Pour the contents into the muffin tin and refrigerate until hard, about one hour.

5.  The deodorant should pop right out of the tin after it’s hard.  It softens at body temperature, so to apply, all you have to do is hold the bar to your underarm for about three seconds, and then rub it on the way you would with other deodorant.  In fact, I’d hazard a guess that you need less of this than conventional deodorant to stop whatever stench you’ve got going on under your arms.  This bar should last you about six months.

Final comments

I’ve never had this bar turn into liquid for me, even when I left it in the car this fall on some really hot, sunny days.  That being said, I store the bar in a small mason jar with a lid to be on the safe side.  A plastic bag would also work.

With a little extra prep this could be a plastic-free method of making deodorant.  The box of baking soda has no plastic.  However, the coconut oil and the tea tree oil both had plastic wrappers around their caps, and the top of the tea tree oil bottle I picked has a plastic top.   Still, I won’t be using the tea tree oil for anything else, so as long as it doesn’t go bad, I’ve got enough tea tree oil to last me years.  I blanked when picking up the vitamin E and bought capsules in a plastic bottle.  I think I had a migraine that day.  Could you find vitamin E that is plastic free?  This is one of those things that I’d need to do more research on.  As for beeswax, I bought a single pure beeswax votive from Whole Foods, and removed the wick and the little aluminum piece from the bottom of the candle.

And really and truly for the last comment, I debated putting the deodorant into a deodorant tube recycled from SavvyRoomie, but the tube wasn’t water tight and I didn’t want the hassle of washing it out and trying to smush semi-solid deodorant into shape.  I’m content with the bar.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I haven’t experimented with essential oils, nor did I keep a price chart of the materials I used.  But I’m thinking this is a cost effective natural deodorant since I can get multiple batches of deodorant out of all the things I bought.  It’s a tri-fecta!  Stink free, plastic-lite, cost-effective deodorant. 

If it’s January, it must be Laura Ingalls Wilder

A lot of people say that February is the dreariest month, but Mr. Savvy and I bring in and send off February with celebrations and memories.  It’s not dreary to me.  January on the other hand?  I get sick of January by the sixth day in.  Maybe that’s why I pick up my Laura Ingalls Wilder books every year and bury myself in them.

Laura was so glad to be at home again, out on Pa’s claim. It was good to milk the cow, and to drink all she wanted of milk, and to spread butter onher bread, and eat again of Ma’s good cottage cheese.There were lettuce leaves to be picked in the garden,too, and little red radishes. She had not realized that she was so hungry for these good things to eat.

and

Laura took her own books to school, and while her little pupils studied at their desks, between recitations,she studied at hers, with help from the big dictionary. At recess and during the long noon hour, she knitted lace while the children played. And always she was aware of the cloud shadows chasing each other outside the windows, where meadow larks sang and the little striped gophers ran swiftly about their affairs.

and

Winter had been pleasant on the claim, but Laura was glad that spring was coming soon. Vaguely as she rode in the nest of blankets on the hay, she thought of the pleasant winter Sundays with the family and Almanzo in the cozy sitting room, and she looked forward to long drives again through the summer sunshine and wind.

and

The sun was sinking now, and she told how its glory of crimson and gold flamed upon the sky and faded to rose and gray.

“Let’s go back to the house now,” Mary said. “I can feel the change in the air.”

They stood a moment longer with hands clasped, facing the west, then slowly they walked down the slope past the stable.

“Time passes so quickly now,” said Mary. “Do you remember when the winter was so long, it seemed thatsummer would never come. And then in summertime, winter was so long ago we almost forgot what it was like?”

“Yes, and what good times we had when we were little,” Laura answered. “But maybe the times that arecoming will be even better. You never know.”

I love seeing what catches my eye with my different readings.  It looks like I’m valuing these quiet moments now.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I can’t help my love of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the way some people love baseball and others like to ski.  All quotes are from These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Tags: laura ingalls wilder

On top

I am on top of the writing world today!  It’s a day when I feel like my fingers can write no errors, when I am happy and friendly and embarrassingly chatty.  I couldn’t let this pass without a quick blog post to say hello to all of you and share the rainbow-unicorn-flying spaghetti monster-excitement and love.

Have you seen my Pinterest feed lately?  I found some great farmy inspiration this week.  What have you been up to?  Let’s talk.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where that, up above, is a picture of the top of an old recipe box belonging to my mother-in-law.  I love folk art.

 

Tags: folk art, happy

I don’t live in a museum

After my grandmother died, my siblings and I each picked out a few things we might like to own to remind us of her.  We all chose something different: I brought home linens, aprons, and a few kitchen utensils because when Memere and I were together, we were cooking.  After supper we would make the bed up so I could sleep in it; all her closets had the same sweet smell.

This blanket was one of those items that came home with me.  It was handmade in Canada by a woman who cut up strips of… old sheets?  Mill ends from fabric mills?  Whatever the case, she wove them through the warps — those white threads visible on the darker stripes — in a striped pattern, to form a heavy blanket with loads of color.  I’ve never seen another blanket like this outside of the ones my grandmother brought home.

My sweet, rascally Lily liked to chew the blanket as a puppy.  To be fair, Lily liked to chew everything, including the legs of our chairs.  The chairs didn’t bother me, but when Lily chewed a hole in the corner of the blanket, I grew upset.  Because clearly the blanket would never be the same again.  And therefore my memories of Memere would never be the same either.

I left the blanket alone for two years, sighing whenever I saw the ugly hole and loose weave.  I delayed washing the poor thing because I didn’t want the hole to grow worse.  I fretted about my blanket’s life expectancy.

And then finally, I patched it.  Because I realized that I don’t live in a museum and nothing will change my memories of my grandmother.

Or said another way, it’s more important to me to keep my things in good shape than it is to preserve the integrity and hocus pocus of whatever memories they hold.  Minimalism and a love of quality save the day once again!

If you’re curious, I searched Etsy for nice fabrics until I settled on three and posed the choice to Mr. Savvy.  He picked this Heather Ross West Hill Floral Stripe in Cornsilk.  I purchased a fat quarter, ironed it to the right shape, and imperfectly handsewed the patch to the blanket one night while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.  Once I got over the idea that Memere lived in the blanket, the rest was easy.

How about you?  Have you ever had a family heirloom that you never changed for the sake of your memories?  Did you ever get over it?

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where Lily happened to pose perfectly with the patch at the end of my photo session, and as a reward we had a fifteen minute snuggle session because she’s awesome.

Tags: heather ross

A Prettyish Kind of Little Wilderness

Here’s a super secret present that I worked on for most of November and part of December.  It’s a gorgeous alpaca shawl that I’ve taken to calling A Prettyish Kind of Little Wilderness, made with local yarn from Hunter Hill Alpacas in Connecticut.  My mother picked out the color and yarn at the Fiber Festival of New England, and then I knit it up for her, managing to gift it only a few days late for her birthday.

I designed the pattern myself, modifying a stitch called Winding Rib from Knitting Fool, with the Aspen Leaf trim lifted straight from the book 150 Knitted Trims.  It turned out well, I think.

It’s a wide, crescent-shaped shawl knit from the center down and out, with the edging knitted on so there’s not 300 stitches to cast off at the end.  I used about 400 yards of DK-ish weight yarn on size 8 needles.  The yarn itself is a hazy, dusky purple with variegated tans and darker purples, making the color shift and move as you look at it.  It’s hard to photograph (and also explains why, when I ran out of yarn with 16 inches of edging to go, I picked up the wrong color even though I had my knitting with me.  I had to drive out to the farm for the second time in a week to get the right color.  Sigh).  Here’s a bit more if you’re interested in the Ravelry link.

I used about half the yarn total for the knitted on trim, and the shawl turned out to be over 48″ (~122cm) long by measuring the center edge straight.  I’m proud of this shawl.  It also frustrated me to no end; I designed and knit and ripped out many mistakes.  I’m not cut out for lace knitting, I think, and so even though I was going to write up the pattern and submit it to the Jane Austen Knits magazine, I’ll pass.  It’s good to know my own limits.

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I didn’t get a picture of the shawl all stretched out, and now I’m kicking myself.  Oh well.  Happy birthday Mom!

Tags: alpaca, hunter hill alpacas, knit, knitting, shawl, yarn, yarn porn

A Very Lily New Year

A happy 2012 to you, if indeed you celebrate this weekend as the new year.  Mr. Savvy and I took our favorite Lily to the park to play her favorite game: rock throwing.

Pick the rock

Throw the rock

Are you going to throw it?

Throw it throw it throwing it

Give chase

[Video description: Lily, the red and white spotted dog in the distance, looks over the field of golden grass toward the camera.  After a moment, she paws at something on the ground, picks up what appears to be a large rock, and starts to carry it back toward the camera.  In the background are the sounds of faint wind and fainter cars going by.]

Happy dog

__________________________________________________________

©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where it took a dozen throws with full out running and retrieving before Lily conceded she might like to lay down a minute.  But just a minute.  ARE YOU PICKING UP ANOTHER ROCK?

Tags: cattle dog, dog, favorite game

In defense of Shetland

Once upon a time, I decided I was going to dress like I was a 1940s working woman.  The economy and silhouette of fashion in the 1940s strikes me as particularly lovely, and I wanted to emulate it.  I’ve had this thought many times over; last summer I wanted to do something about it, so I looked on Ravelry for vintage-y knitting patterns.

I came across Kate Davies’s blog, Needled — in particular this post about a sweet vintage-looking sweater, which led me to this shirt, and this smock.  And then this quote:

Everyone we saw while we were out enjoying it yesterday was wearing a fleece – a garment whose name and synthetic composition I regard as an insult to sheep. You probably know by now that I have firm thoughts on wool and outdoor wear – I was exceedingly happy in my Shetland smock, but restrained myself from preaching the virtues of natural fibres from the cliff top at St Abbs. . .

Ha!  It made me laugh.  Fleece is kind of an insult to sheep.  What is this Shetland she’s talking about?  Shetland, as in Shetland pony?  Any horse lover has heard of Shetland ponies.  Shetland… sheep?

I did a little more research.  Shetland is a wool that’s supposed to wear like iron.  Yet some of it is soft enough for lace and shawls and durable enough for mittens and sweaters (depending on the age of the sheep at shearing time and the body part the wool comes from).  Shetland sheep are small and smart and robust because they were allowed to roam free on the Isles of Shetland, and not genetically modified to be all one color or produce lots of wool.  Shetlands are a slow sheep, if you will.

This was enough to intrigue me.  I began to talk about Shetlands to Mr. Savvy, about owning them on our farm. I thought I should knit with some Shetland to make sure we both liked it.

At the New England Fiber Festival, I saw them — real live Shetlands.  There were two.  They looked smart and wary of strangers, and I didn’t get any pictures because I felt overloaded by the amount of woolly goodness I saw that day.  But they struck me.

“I want to own Shetlands,” I told Mr. Savvy.

I did more research.  In one memorable insomniac night of fervent internet typing, I found out that the first Shetlands didn’t come to the United States until the late 1980s.  They were imported here (by Maple Ridge Sheep Farm, who sold me that teal wool above) in an effort to save Shetlands from extinction, should some natural disaster occur in the Shetland Islands.  So Shetlands are a heritage breed.  I found out more about patterns and colors and markings and care.  I ordered yarn.

The next morning, I told Mr. Savvy we were getting Shetlands, hands down.  And now, after knitting with the wool, I’m more convinced than ever.

Shetland has a lovely feel to it — springy, dense, almost shifting.  It’s as if the yarn will do whatever I want because it can handle many forms (unlike, say, alpaca, which drapes in the extreme and doesn’t bounce back).  I picture the sheep when I’m working with it, like the yarn has imbibed some Shetland sheepie sensibilities and craftiness from the individual animals who grew the wool.  I like that about it.  It feels alive.

Last weekend, my mother-in-law gifted me with some yarn for the holiday.  “It’s not Shetland,” she said, a little confused.  “I went to the yarn store in town and the woman said they didn’t carry it because it’s too scratchy to use.”  A pause, then she continued hesitantly, “Why do you want Shetlands?  What makes them so special?”

I thought about the thrummed mittens I’m making Mr. Savvy out of three different farms of Shetland.  I thought of Kate Davies and Shetland lace and the two sheep I saw at the festival, and I saw myself trying to shear a sheep by hand some time in the future.

I said, “Shetlands are different.  Let me show you.”

We spent the afternoon poring over The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, my mitten project at her side.  I think she sees now what I mean.  I’m not against convincing one person at a time.

__________________________________________________________

©2011 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I wish I could send each and every one of you a sample of wool from that last photo.  If all stuffed animals were stuffed with Shetland, there’s a very good argument for them being alive.  No affiliate anything in this post.

 

Tags: knitting, natural fibres, ravelry, sheep, shetland, yarn porn