Winter Wonderland {with our dog sledding team}

The snow kept falling the whole night long after I snapped that photograph in my last post. The next day the children spent as much time as possible in it, including some time sledding with our dogs. I wasn't able to get some action shots of our dog team this time around like I did last year. My slow, pregnant self coupled with the harsh noon sun made it a bit of a struggle to get any photographs at all.

Off they go! A few seconds later (notice the toboggan is empty and the children are all spun around facing the opposite direction). Everyone was fine. The snow padded their fall. K decided to try it on her own while L and C came to hang out with me and watch. Right after this picture was taken the dogs decided to run straight at L and I and knock us over. Rascals Our dog team Nara couldn't keep up with the boys and ended up faceplanting into the snow. Kevin unattached her and just let her run alongside after that. Really that is what she prefers anyway. C and L decided to pamper her and feed her some snow. Nara wasn't too interested so L decided to eat it himself... ...and share with C. Kevin decided the dogs needed to get rid of some of their energy before the children tried again. K helped him prepare. Off goes Kevin on the tobbogan! That wore the dogs down fast. C following the toboggan tracks in her Jan Brett hat (They are still my favorite hats!). Ready to go home and warm up. What a fun time it was!!

Winter Wonderland {with our dog sledding team}

What a sight for sore eyes!

To be continued...

What a sight for sore eyes!

Keep Calm Craft On {crafting on}

The act of creating, in one form or another, preserves my sanity amongst the chaos of life. This explains why I always have more than one project going at a time as well as why my housework tends to fall behind. I enjoy seeing what others are working on and keeping calm with, too. What are you creating? What is keeping you going? Snap a picture or two and share it with the rest of us by leaving your link below.

Itty bitty newborn longies - is there anything sweeter?!

What are you working on? Happy creating!

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Keep Calm Craft On {crafting on}

Our new yarn dyeing habit

late night yarn dyeing

knitting with the dockseed dyed yarn (I'm so happy about the subtle variation! I have had a hard time trying to achieve that with our yarn dyeing so far)

two skeins of wool yarn and one skein of silk yarn soaking in a black bean dye bath

wool yarn dyed with black beans

wool yarn on left, silk yarn on right - both dyed at the same time in the same black bean dye bath

yarn simmering in a marigold dye bath (leftover from Michaelmas)

the marigold dyed yarn being over-dyed in the black bean dye bath

progression of color: yarn in front is a skein of marigold dyed yarn after soaking in the black bean dye bath for an hour, the skein in back was just placed in a few minutes before

I have had a few requests to share how K and I have been dyeing our yarn with natural dyes so I thought I would try my best to share our madness methods. Please keep in mind that I am by no means an expert and am learning alongside K (the yarn dyeing mastermind) by trial and error, and advice from wonderful friends. We have had a failure with our bachelor button dye bath trial but we think the experimenting is rather fun! This book has been our number one resource, along with help from K's former handwork teacher at Portland Waldorf School, but you can also find a lot of yarn dyeing information online.

We start out by applying a mordant to our yarn. We typically do about 8 ounces of yarn at a time which works out to a mordant solution of 2 tbsp. alum and 2 tsp. cream of tartar in a pot of water. We simmer the yarn in the solution for about twenty minutes or so and then move it into the dye bath.

For the dockseed dyed yarn shown above and in last Wednesday's post we did the following:

We simmered about 4 ounces of chopped dockseed stalks we collected back in Oregon (I have a jar of the seeds leftover to make crackers with and perhaps try planting in our garden) in a large pot on the stovetop for about an hour and then let the dye bath sit overnight. The next day we strained out the stalks and brought the pot back to a simmer. We added our premordanted (and still wet) yarn to the pot and let it continue to simmer. We were supposed to leave it in for an hour but I took ours out after about thirty five minutes or so. I was afraid it would become a dark brown and I was hoping for a warm, light nutmeg shade. We took the yarn out with some tongs and let it cool down to room temperature. Then we rinsed it in lukewarm water and hung it to dry.

The black bean dyed yarn was a bit more time consuming as it involves soaking for longer periods and not simmering on the stove top. We again planned on dyeing about 8 ounces of yarn total. To do so we poured eight cups of dried black beans in our largest pot and filled it with warm water. We let it soak for forty eight hours (word of caution - this dye bath gets smelly so a laundry room, basement or garage would be a good place to store it while it soaks). Then we strained out the beans and added our premordanted yarn to the dye bath. This time we tried dyeing a couple of skeins of wool yarn and one skein of pure silk yarn (K really has her heart set on knitting the baby a silk hat). I was told to let the yarn sit for forty eight hours but, as usual, we couldn't wait that long. After about twenty four hours we took our yarn out. We rinsed it with lukewarm water (really, really well to remove any smell) and hung it up to dry. You can see in the photographs above that the silk took the dye differently than the wool. The wool is a brighter blue while the silk is almost purple/blue.

Seeing our pretty blue yarn gave K and I an idea. She had been wanting to make a green dye so we thought we would experiment with the dye baths we already had to create our own green by over-dyeing. First we grabbed eight ounces of wool yarn and applied our mordant solution. Then we got out our leftover marigold dye bath, poured it into a pot, added the yarn and simmered it for thirty minutes. We took the marigold dyed yarn out, let it cool and rinsed it with lukewarm water. Then we immediately placed one of the skeins into our leftover black bean dye bath (not on the stove top!). I only did one skein at first because I didn't know how our experiment would turn out and I was a bit attached to the pale yellow yarn we made. At first the yarn looked like it was going to turn an unattractive shade of brown but after about an hour it turned green! Happy with our little experiment, I then added the second skein of marigold yarn. I didn't keep track of exactly how long we left the skeins in, I just kept checking on them throughout the day until I thought they were just the shade of green we were hoping for. I would guess they spent maybe four or five hours total in the black bean dye bath. We rinsed them in lukewarm water and hung them to dry. They turned into this beautiful spring green color. I wasn't able to capture it with my camera today but I will try again this week so you can see what I mean.

I warn you, dyeing yarn with materials found in your backyard or garden is highly addictive. I can't sleep some nights thinking about what we can dye with next. This week I think we'll try using our black walnuts we collected at Walnut Hill (Portland Waldorf School).

Our new yarn dyeing habit

slowing down

morning light

yarn drying in the moonlight

autumn window stars

fort building...or perhaps nest building since they were pretending to be magpies

our dock seed dyed yarn in the daylight

itchy belly (soothed with lavender essential oil mixed with coconut oil)

the current state of my desk

Things has slowed down around here. For the first time in my life I have been experiencing Braxton hicks contractions causing me to rest and relax more. I normally don't feel contractions until just a couple of hours before birth so this is new to me. Rest? Relax? How does one do that?! Nesting, homeschooling and urban homesteading don't really bring about idle time but I am learning to embrace it. The girls have been great sports about doing schoolwork with me in bed, even if it is less than ideal. K and I did manage to get a bit of yarn dyeing in. We made a dye bath from some yellow dock seed stocks we harvested a couple of years ago down the road from our house in Oregon. The baby will get something special knit with this Oregon love yarn.

slowing down

Keep Calm Craft On {crafting on}

The act of creating, in one form or another, preserves my sanity amongst the chaos of life. This explains why I always have more than one project going at a time as well as why my housework tends to fall behind. I enjoy seeing what others are working on and keeping calm with, too. What are you creating? What is keeping you going? Snap a picture or two and share it with the rest of us by leaving your link below.

My baby's blanket is flying off the needles. I expected it to drag on like Little L's blanket did, but the charts on this are so easy to memorize that I got a nice rhythm down. Now I am at the tedious part of grafting the four squares together with the Kitchener stitch. This requires my full attention so I am only able to do it after the children are asleep. The pattern says to sew the squares together but I am not a fan of seams so this appears to be a good solution. After I finish grafting I plan on knitting more of a border around the blanket, too. I still have 1 1/2 skeins of yarn left so why not?

What are you working on? Happy creating!

p.s. - Last chance to enter the Knecht Ruprecht giveaway here!

An InLinkz Link-up

Keep Calm Craft On {crafting on}

Laterne, Laterne {Martinmas 2015}

I didn't think we would manage it but somehow we pulled off a pretty nice Martinmas this year. We tied our celebration in with C's 2nd grade Saints and Heroes main lesson, which worked out quite nicely. I had plan to make wool lanterns but then we decided to scratch that idea when we remembered how strong the wind was on last year's lantern walk. We went with simple watercolor painted lanterns instead. They seemed a bit sturdier and up to the challenge. Little L decided he didn't want to make a lantern this year so he used his one from last year instead. Nara was the dog of choice for this Martinmas and she wore her SAR blinking light on her harness as her lantern.

The children all donned St. Martin cloaks for a couple of photographs but then changed into some winter coats for the actual walk. The weather was much more agreeable this year and we actually became quite hot on our walk. Even so, the children still wanted their traditional hot apple cider and roasted chestnuts when we returned home (by lantern light, of course!).

K serenaded us with Martinmas songs on her flute before we all headed off to bed. I thought I would share one of them with all of you:



Laterne, Laterne

Laterne, Laterne
Sonne, Mond und Sterne Brenne auf,
mein Licht, Brenne auf,
mein Licht Aber nur meine liebe Laterne nicht.

I can't speak or sing German but K sings this quite beautifully.The English version is known as My Lantern and can be found in the Wynstones Press Autumn book.

Laterne, Laterne {Martinmas 2015}