Makings

There has been quite a flurry of making around here lately. Unmaking too, as the cat on the baby laundry pile proves. I guess we just prefer to create instead of clean. Can you blame us?

When we were in Oregon during the fall, K and I had gathered a bag full of walnuts from Walnut Hill (at our beloved school) for the purpose of dyeing yarn. I forgot about the walnuts for awhile but then found them again at the end of November. K wanted to make a dye bath immediately so we researched how to do so. We found quite a few different recipes and tutorials for making walnut dye but K and I ended up choosing the fermentation method in this book. The walnuts sat in a bucket fermenting (the book said at least 3 weeks) until last weekend when we finally opened it up and made our dye bath. It was an intense dark brown but the dye yielded a beautiful warm honey brown. I’ll share photographs once it’s dry.

The children has all been immensely enjoying a new part of our baking rhythm – grinding our own grain in a grain mill Grandma gave them for Christmas. Little L, especially, loves to grind the grain. I swear he could go on for hours! This wonderful gift has inspired us to grow some grains in our garden this year so we can enjoy bread truly made from our own hands from seed to finished product. How great will that be? I just hope we have enough space to grow enough for this endeavor.

And what is a post without something pregnancy/baby related (at least this month)? The children and I are also working on some baby bum bath salt (a natural remedy for diaper rashes). We made our chickweed, plantain and calendula infused oil and now just have to add the rest of the ingredients. Funny thing about our infused oil – I don’t know what I was thinking but I put it outside in the sun for a solar infusion like we normally do (as indicated in this book), forgetting that the current temperatures are below freezing. My oil became solid so we brought it back inside and did a double boiler infusion instead.

I was hoping to finish up the baby bum bath salt today but when I opened the Epsom salt that I had purchased a strong smell came from it. I checked the ingredients and there was fragrance added to it. I hadn’t come across that before so I never thought to check the ingredients when I picked it up. Oh well. So our salt soak is on hold a couple days longer until I can get to the store again. Now what else can I find to make whilst avoiding the laundry?