I've Been Dyeing to Show You

 Hello there! Until yesterday we were enjoying a wonderful fall with temperatures in the 60s or 70s by day and 50s by night.  Wonderful time of year.

 Morning glories are blooming on the chicken yard fence.  We like to keep our fence clear, but these aren't weeds; I didn't have the heart to pull them down. They're still blooming since we haven't had a frost yet.

 Our jalapeno peppers did very well in the garden this year. I saved some in jars, but we have literally stuffed ourselves with them more than once since I found the best recipe here that is amazingly similar to Cheddar Peppers @ Sonic, only better. ;)

 

 I made a batch of soap and defiantly cut a few of the bars fatter than usual. I'm just stubborn sometimes. ;)

 I prepared some off-white yarn to try dyeing with ...

 These lovely poke berries that I gathered in the pasture.

 I have wanted to do this for ages. Anyway, I used the directions in my book Harvesting Color to guide me. Here I pre-mordanted the wool in vinegar for two hours. This method as described in the book yielded better results than I'd had before. The book may be available at your local library, if not, you can request they get it. Wonderful book on natural dyes.

 Meantime, I squeezed the berries then strained them and brought the mixture to the correct temperature for the dyebath.

 As I lowered the wool in the bath it soaked up so much color I had a feeling it was going to work. The dyebath was kept at 170 degrees for two hours then I turned the heat off, covered it with a lid and let set overnight.

 Here's the finished result. The yarn is actually darker red than the pic, but my camera is defiant, too, so this is the as close to the true color shade as I could get.

 Goodman built some raised beds for my strawberry plants. I really enjoy working in raised beds as I can sit on the side and weed away without getting a backache. We filled them with regular topsoil mixed with mushroom compost. That's asparagus in the far back bed. Goodman found some asparagus plants growing along the back fenceline, and we put them in the bed. I'm pretty sure they grew from seeds of the plants I had several years ago, that were scattered by birds.

Hope you're having a wonderful fall, Y'all!
Linked with: Wildcrafting Wednesday, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Good Fences




mersacres.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20HomeAcre%20Harvest%20Hop" target="_blank">

The Hangin' Tree & Renderin'

The bluebirds are constant visitors around our place now that spring is near..Lacy Diamond Dishcloth

And I've done bit of dyeing with this wool rug yarn for an upcoming project.

Here's the result hangin' to dry on our "hangin' tree"...lol.  Besides giving nice shade to the yard it doubles as a dryer sometimes.

As you may remember from a previous post or two, I make all of our soap. I got this beef suet from a butcher for renderin' down for soap.

I like to get it pre-ground, but this time it was in huge chunks so I had to grind it in my meat grinder. The smaller the pieces the more tallow you get when you render it down.

So I spent another day at the fire pit adding water and suet and letting it boil till all the fat was released.

I had to strain all the bits of non-fat out before it could be used for soap, so I did that and put the leavin's into pans to freeze for feeding birds. Suet, for the birds. That's how that's made.

Now, for soap - I used the tallow for a pretty large batch of soap which I pour into all sizes of molds...
There are lots of soap recipes online and in books at your local library. I use Norma Coney's The Complete Soapmaker as my soapmaking and rendering guide.

This is a batch of plain soap, pure and natural.

I make a lot of different sizes. It takes 2-3 weeks for it to dry. We're looking forward to using it soon as we are running low on plain soap. I used to make a lot of scented soap, but Goodman prefers it plain these days.

(Note: I've been having trouble with leaving comments at two or three favorite blogs that I read. As you know, I read them from my phone these days and sometimes the comments just disappear or I don't get a link to leave them at all. It's very frustrating after all the time it takes to text it in to begin with, and I hope you understand if that happens.)

(Edited to say: Thanks to A Joyful Chaos I found out that the fairly newly chosen embellishment to transform my quite dry sounding profile ID Tea to something more fun was strikingly similar to political events taking place around the country. (Well, how dare they use my new moniker! ;) Anyways, I don't watch the news or anything really since I don't own a television so I was in the dark about that. I'm happy this way so don't worry about me, eh. My tea events actually involve tea with milk and sugar and a lot of knitting besides. :) Btw, if you haven't visited A Joyful Chaos you might want to do that. The author Mary Ann grew up Amish and has gifted us with many wonderful stories about her childhood and young married life. I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

Here we are nearly done with February...

Have a great week, Y'all!

This post may be shared with...   From the Farm Blog Hop,  Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways,  The HomeAcre Hop The Art of Home-making Mondays

Ackk, Save Me...er Won't You Save My Sanity and Buy My House AS IS?

Hey y'all. (she says in a li'l shaky voice) It's been a long, long summer. I'm sure it feels that way because every time we've started a new face lift project on this old farmhouse it grewwwww into two or three times what we thought it would be. Argh, and so we trudge onward. Ha, one good thing - downsizing - feels pretty good. I've sold two spinning wheels that I haven't touched in nearly ten years, among other things. Squee.... I can actually walk to the bookcase in my bedroom now. Smiles. Uh, no, I didn't sell any yarn. I'm not that insane; just a little less encumbered of things I don't need. That part is really heartening.

Now, on to fun stuff. Our garden is still producing nicely.

Woohoo, Peach croustade. You can get the recipe for a strawberry/blueberry one here. I've made this with just plain strawberries, too, and it's delicious. But the best part is it's tasty without a lot of sugar. ;)

I've dabbled a little in the dye pot/bowl lately just to clear the rotted-wood cobwebs out of my head.
I love this super soft yarn, but I wanted these skeins to be a deeper, bluer purple.
So I first over-dyed it with a heaping teaspoonful of Wilton’s Royal icing color in the microwave. Alas, it came out too blue.
Then I over dyed again with 1/4 teaspoon Wilton’s Black and 1 teaspoon of Violet. The true color is actually darker than the picture, and I’m really happy with it now. Destined to soon become Fetching.
Oh, I can't wait till Fall, Y'all. Bring it on! :)