Check-In Post March 13th 2021

[badly_knitted]

Hello to all members, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


Today's Question: No question today.


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Comments

[smallhobbit]

Natural dyeing would be interesting. Would you need a lot of plants to make a small amount of dye?

[annofowlshire]

I’m still learning the details, but I think I could do a few lots of wool in the same dye batch (although the color may fade after a while). So if that’s half a dozen onions or one red cabbage, that’s not terrible. And I’m not exactly going to run out of access to nettles around here XD I think using things like lichen would be more sparing since that’s a bit rarer.

[badly_knitted]

Lichens would be difficult to gather in any quantity, I'd imagine, they're so small and finding enough of the same kind might be tricky, but being in the country you'd presumably have the space to grow some of the plants you'd use. Could you make a dye out of grass, I wonder...

[annofowlshire]

There’s a fair bit of lichen in the woodland, but lichen takes so long to grow that I’d feel a bit bad harvesting it in any great quantity. There are other things I can grow or forage or even buy—like onions, red cabbage, nettles, blackberries, lavender, etc. that are plentiful and available in sustainable quantities.

And once I’m done I should be able to lop them into compost (or feed them to the chickens when we get them, which is currently looking like next year) for secondary usage ^_^

[badly_knitted]

Waste not want not! I compost all organic waste, but I'm still trying to wrest my garden back from the overgrowth that took over while I was caring full-time for my late mother. I didn't have the energy for gardening for a long time. The last two or three years I've made some decent progress but there's still a lot to do.

My neighbours have rescue chickens and I love hearing them clucking about the garden.

[annofowlshire]

I had chickens about 10 years ago and loved it. Mr was a little skeptical, but we have a lot of wild/semi-tame pheasants around here and one has become particularly friendly to us (will eat out of our hand, let us stroke him, hangs out within a meter of us while we’re outside—even my 2 year old! We think he’s an escapee from a shoot site) and so he’s getting more keen on the idea of having a flock of outdoor birds (we’re also talking about quail, ducks, and guinea fowl). I want to get on the rescue chicken list once we get/set up a coop, but again we’ve got a lot on right now so it’s not high priority this year. I check places like FB marketplace once and a while for good secondhand coops when I think of it but so far haven’t seen what I want.

Good luck with reclaiming your garden. We’re also wrestling an overgrown garden into shape—the folks who had owned this place before us had let it go for a few years. Bamboo and wood geranium and brambles everywhere. I think it’ll be a few years before we feel like we’ve won the war.

[badly_knitted]

From personal experience, quail aren't the easiest of birds to keep. My sister tried a few times but they kept dying. We did have a couple of ducks for a while, or at least mum did, but dad disliked the mess they made and his word was law, so Topsy and Turvy had to go. I can vouch for having ducks though, they're wonderful, although ours were escape artists.

Brambles are a large part of my problem, they're everywhere are the roots are really hard to get out, especially if they're close to something you want to keep. They go down really deep. I took to twisting those lumpy knuckles that the shoots grow out of until the roots finally snapped. Dug down a foot or so, then just kept twisting until I could pull a good chunk of root out, but I've only done two small areas, there's a lot still to do, and it's hard work. I'm not as young as I used to be.