Nicole Alderman

R Grier wrote:
I have also taught my daughter how to make flower chains, which she has taken to the next level. They love gathering organic teas with me. I was thinking about teaching them about Mordants and natural dyes, I found a stand of fragrant sumac and there are numerous dye plants around us. I was going to use white twine.

Dyes stick best to animal fibers (like wool and silk). If you have any white wool yarn, you'll probably have a more successful dye than with white twine. If the wool is "natural white" rather than bleached, it will work even better (bleached wool seems to be more resistant to dying).

In terms of what dyes well, this seems to be the generally understood order of best-to-worst for dying:

- Silk
- Wool
- Plant fibers like cotton, hemp, nettle, jute
- Synthetic fibers

A mordant will also help the dyes stick better, too. If you can get your hands on alum (like is used for pickling), that will work well and is generally regarded as safe. You could also do the dying in an aluminum, copper, or iron pot, which will give a slight amount of mordanting. The copper will making things more teal, the iron more brown/greenish color.

I've found that one good way to get my kids to do a craft--rather than just me doing it--is to have them learn it while part of a group. These sorts of projects work well in playgroups or homeschool co-ops. The added benefit to this is that the work you spend on preparing supplies, etc, helps more than just your own kids. It always feels a bit disappointing to spend an hour preparing for an activity that the kids might do for 15 minutes. But, if you have a group of kids, it doesn't take that much more prepwork, and it feels more worthwhile because a lot of kids learn. And, your own kids get to have fun doing stuff with their friends.

R Grier wrote:You said "tallow flakes" but then acted as if they were soap? Was it straight tallow or tallow soap? I have tallow. And I have plants with sopapians (ot what that word is) and I have wood ash, and roses, mint, rose water. I was trying to find how to transform the tallow into soap. Do I need to start by leeching the wood ashes? Or is there a way without lyme?

Oh, sorry! I made this post in a hurry because someone had asked about the soap balls. I'm sorry if I didn't explain things well! I used these tallow soap flakes that I bought off of Amazon. They're just soap that's made from tallow. You could use Castile soap (which is made from olive oil) I have not made my own soap before--working with lye always seemed a little scary to me. I believe the first step is to leach the lye from the soap. Sally Pointer has a great video on leaching lye:



She also continued her tutorial to talk about making soap:



Once again, I've never made soap (just soap balls made with purchased soap), so I don't have much advice to give!

Maybe make a new post about making soap? You might also find more information in these threads about soap making: How to make soap without lye, soap making, Grease Cutting Lard Soap.

I hope that helps!

Pete Podurgiel wrote:Awesome find! ....looks like Jabba the Hutt.

Ha! I posted without seeing your post. Great minds think alike...or at least both see Jabba the Hutt!

I just added nettles to the list! Being a wild food, I hadn't really thought about it as a crop. But, I've been tending my wild patch for years, and now have enough to eat a meal or three each week during the season of nettles. They're so yummy! (They're a fun source of fiber for spinning, too!)

This is frankly one of my favorite topics--and there's some awesome threads on it, too.

Staple Crops

How Many Of Each Plant To Grow As A Percentage Of Total Calories

The Annual Staple Crop Calculator

Practical 1-Acre Staple Foods

Human Energy Spent Versus Kilocalories Harvested.....

Ideas about Growing All Your Own Food

Most productive perennial vegetables?

Staples

Perennial Sources of Starch and Protein

I thought it might be fun to have an apple poll...which also ends up being a spiffy way to list all of the different staple crops mentioned by people over various threads, so that those crops can be seen in one spot. I tried to organize them a little, but our apple poll program makes it really difficult to rearrange things. If you have more crops you'd like added, post below! There's no closing date on this poll, so hopefully we'll be able to adding to it for years to come

[applepoll]

I went and reminisced on my old thread, and noticed that, after just one year, my comfrey was already taller than my 2.5 year old!

My established comfrey is about 4 feet tall. I don't fertilize mine at all.  Mine is even wider than yours. I think comfrey just likes to get big? My plants are 11 and 8 years old (planted on my kids' first birthdays).

I'm not sure what type of comfrey mine is (mine is blocking and has purple flowers, and I got it from a local permie and didn't ask what type it was). Hopefully someone else knows comfrey better and can tell you what type you have!