Unstuffed: The Crafty Urban Homestead

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Crafty Urban Homestead

The weather has changed. The run on September sun ended the other day. The temperature regularly dips into the single digits at night and I've taken to throwing a light scarf around my neck for my bike to work in the morning. My tires crunch through yellowed leaves on the street.

There is still harvesting and work to be done in the garden and soon I will go wildcrafting for medicinal roots, but the hectic, almost frantic days of bolting home from work, to the garden and working hard outside until sunset are waning. I can feel the rhythm of my days and the nature of my homestead work changing with the season and I welcome it with a deep sigh of contentment. Ah fall. Time...to...slow...down.

I love this season and one sure sign of its arrival for me, is the urge to make myself comfortable on the couch, pick up a hook and some yarn, and crochet the lengthening evenings away.

For the last two night that's exactly what I've done, and it was pure bliss.

I started with a fun and easy project that I've made before and really enjoy. I've saved some mesh onion bags and by crocheting handles onto them, I can reuse them as produce bags, avoiding the need for disposable plastic. I can finish one in a few hours so it gives me a nice sense of accomplishment. (You can see the purple one I completed the first night, in the photo, holding potatoes for demonstration. Yep, these bags are sturdy.)

I like that I'm repurposing something that most people throw away and I'm also using scrap, thrifted yarn, reducing waste in the creation and the use of the bags. Awesome. Plus, (I like to think) they make nice gifts. (Oh and I really got a kick out of the fact that I actually had matching yarn for the purple and orange bags!)

I made a few of these last winter and posted a step by step tutorial on the blog. You can find it here.

Does the rhythm of your days change with the seasons? What are your favourite fall activities?

3 comments:

Tony R. said...: Fall has always been my favorite time of year...for me it is a time to play and enjoy people. Fall is a time to put down the shovel and pickup the wine!

We are putting sod down this weekend and then my summer chores are finished for another year!; September 17, 2009 at 9:02 AM
Amber said...: Hey Tony! Good point about socialising. I've been so busy with the garden, harvesting, preserving etc, that I haven't had much chance to get together with folks. I should definitely do so in the fall, before I start hibernating for the winter!

Good luck with your sod project!; September 18, 2009 at 8:08 AM
Pearlie Mcilvaine said...: Me too! I’ve been saving my mesh onion bags for my next project. Last time, I made a big ribbon out of it to finish the packaging of my birthday gift for my sister. My sister loved it. She said it was very simple and yet very lovely. =); August 16, 2012 at 11:08 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali