I have been really blessed this past year, when it comes to fiber arts. I finally found a spinning wheel at an affordable price, I was gifted with an inkle loom and also I was gifted with a small tabletop loom that has string heddles.
I am almost ready to start weaving...once I get some cotton or linen thread...and there's that whole "learning to warp my loom" bit. Good thing I have lots of intelligent and knowledgeable friends. Oh, Kelly... Oh, Liz....
*(I do have books, but I'm a tactile/visual learner)
I've been thinking about electricity lately...or rather the lack of electricity. I've been gathering together winter emergency supplies, like I do every fall. When you life in a rural area, winter storms can do more than prevent you from going anywhere. They can knock out power, which in our case means no pump, thus no water, no toilet flushing and no heat. I've been perusing different emergency preparedness websites in order to double check my preps. So far, so good. Some easily prepared and heated foods that we cook on our camp stove, extra water, and blankets. If there is a power outage that lasts more than a day or so, we are out of our element because we still have no source of secondary heat. It really makes me think about what we would do in a real power grid emergency.
We lived for a year with no electricty, back in the year 2000. We lived in an Amish built house with a handpump, an outhouse, oil lamps, and a pioneer built woodstove. It was hard, it nearly broke us, and I am supremely glad that I did it. It certainly makes me appreciate the ease of turning on lights, or having water poor out of a spout at the twist of a tap, in our currrent home. However, I do fear that in general, society is loosing a skill set that once gone, will be difficult to regain. How many of us out there can start a fire without a match or lighter? Who knows how to fell a tree with an axe? Who knows how to build sturdy and long lasting items using only handtools. How many of us know how to preserve food in a root cellar?
Thankfully, I have a lot of resilient and knowlegable friends who, through our mutual love of history and/or self-sufficiancy, have mastered many of these past skills. I have friends who are weavers, spinsters, rug hookers, basket makers, garderners, brewers, seamstresses (by hand, not sewing machine), blacksmiths, carpenters (using hand tools), etc...
I am working on learning to spin, basket weave and sew by hand. What skills are you learning?
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"We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable."
~Booker T. Washington
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I have a few new helpers around the house now. They're not time-savers, but back-savers. Here are two of them:
My grippy sticks (I know that's not their official name, but that's what they are called around here).
See, I can put laundry in the hamper, or use them to put away cereal in the bottom cupboard.
My other new helper is my "Sock putter-on-er". (Also not the official name)
Terry cloth on one side to grip the sock, nylon on the other side so that my foot slides in, and two long strings to pull it up. I love these gadgets!
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I think I am going into week 4 of this prolapsed disk thing, and I am finally able to move around a lot easier. I have gone back to work on light duties and have been coming home sore and exhausted. Thankfully I only work part time. However, for the last few weeks, my hubby and my son have been doing the bulk of the work at home and ...well, I don't want to be ungrateful, but shall we say that most men have a bit of a different way of cleaning ? So here I sit, looking around my wreck of a house and wondering, "Where do I start?"
Aha! Hot water...I rinsed off the dishes with hot water, I filled my dish basin with hot soapy water, I threw my whites in the laundry machine with hot water and I put a pan of water on the stove to boil for instant chicken soup and already I feel like I've accomplished something...and all under 15 minutes.
*Note to self: Make sure you take your shower BEFORE using up all the hot water.
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