Hal Schibel

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- make a sewn or needle-felted repair to a hole in a shoe or slipper
- use natural materials like cotton or wool

To document your completion of the BB, provide proof of the following as pictures or a video (less than two minutes):
- shoe or slipper with the hole to be repaired
- the tools and materials you will use
- the repair in progress
- your shoe or slipper with the hole repaired!

I finally fixed the hole in my slippers. I used a regular needle and cotton thread and was able to sew through the existing holes without making new holes. You can barely tell that it was repaired.

Materials.


Repair in progress.


Repair completed.


Good as new!

Whoops! I submitted this for the wrong BB. I moved the post to the correct one.

For repairing holes in slippers, see this BB: https://permies.com/wiki/153781/pep-textiles/Mend-hole-shoe-slipper-PEP

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- must be knit fabric
- must be a truly invisible mend - not obviously visible from 3 feet away

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, provide proof of the following as pics or video (less than two minutes):
-  the hole in your knit fabric, darning needle, and repair yarn
-  your darning in progress
-  your mended fabric

Mended this sweater I got from an antique store.

Starting materials. This was the closest yarn I could find. Both sweater and yarn are wool.


Darning.




Done (sorry it's upside-down).

To document the completion of the BB, provide the photos or video (<2 min) of the following:

- Photos/video of your poultry waterer before and after your check.
- Photos/video of your poultry feed/feeder before and after your check.
- Photos/video of your nesting boxes before and after your check.
- Photos/video of your coop before and after a safety/wellness check was performed/issue was addressed ( please provide a written description of what you checked as well)

Step 1: Check Their Water Source

- Rinse out the basin/nipples for their waterer. If there is signs of build up/grossness wash out the waterer with your choice of cleaner.
- Check to make sure your fowl's water source is full/ample.
- Visual inspection of their water quality; looking for signs of rusting, inappropriate algal growth, and other gick. If found address the problem.  

They have a metal waterer, which was full of mud. I rinsed it out and it looks nice and clean. They also have a little tub that was also full of mud. I rinsed that out as well and now it is much cleaner. I filled up both with water that I hauled out to their area. The water was a little frozen at first, but it broke up easily when I kicked it. I think it's too cold for gross things to be growing in the water since I did not find anything like that.

BEFORE:



AFTER:




Step 2: Check Their Food Source

- Check that their feeder is full. (If forage feed only, describe how you check they are getting ample feed.)
- Check feed stock for mold, unwanted moisture, or sign of rodents/pests.

I don't have a feeder out there for them currently. I bring them fresh sprouts and fermented goodies twice a day and just spread it on the ground for them. The bins for these were a bit slimy so I cleaned out the sprout container with soap and water in the sink and the bucket I just rinsed really well.

BEFORE:




AFTER:




Step 3: Check for Eggs

- Collect eggs from nesting boxes.
- If there are any broken eggs/dirty nesting boxes, clean the nesting box and change over the nesting material.
- Visual check of egg quality (Looking for signs of thin shells, warped shells, shell discolouration, rubbery shells, no shell, ect.)

I only found one egg this morning. Looks healthy.





Step 4: Safety/Wellness Check

- Inspect coop (if present) for quality of bedding. If poor, change over/add additional bedding/address the problem.
- Inspect coop for sharp objects & over head hazards (protruding nails, staples, loose chicken wire, unaffixed heavy objects, ect). Address any problems identified.
- Inspect coop and surrounding area for signs of predators (dig marks, holes in fencing, scat, ect). Address any problems identified.

I changed the bedding and cleaned out the bottom two boxes because they had poop in them. I also scraped off the removable pieces in the coop and laid them out in the sun to dry off. I found two small sharp things poking out in the coop and I pushed them in with a hammer. I didn't find any other safety hazards.

BEFORE:






CLEANING:




AFTER:

As someone with five college degrees, I will usually advise people against going to college.

The only reason I would say to go is if they want to do something very specific and you can't talk them out of it. I had something very specific in mind and could not get into it once I graduated. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, I would tell myself to go to trade school and become a carpenter. Recently I have been thinking that you should always be wary of career advice from anyone if it is not something you can act upon immediately. With how fast the world is changing, by the time you can act upon the advice, the context will have changed and it will no longer be relevant.

My main piece of advice to anyone considering college is to be wary of any institution that sells you on "feelings" rather than actual accomplishments.

I greatly enjoyed school and felt like I was accomplishing a lot because I would feel good about myself when i got my good grades and my diplomas. But when I got out into the real world, what mattered wasn't the information I thought I was learning but forgot as soon as the test was over, it was the ability to work. But even then abilities don't always matter. The hard part is getting a job without any experience. You need experience to get one of the "higher-paying" jobs, not just a degree. Some of them don't even care about a degree (including software engineering jobs). And the experience you need is usually extremely specific. Job boards did not help me at all. I only got jobs by talking to people.

One thing that drove me through school was fear. Fear of not being able to support myself. Fear of not being able to support my parents as they got older. And pride that I must be super smart and I can get the highest paying jobs no problem because I had good grades. I had an adviser early on encourage me to go into science because "I was good at math." I was not able to find a job in science. I went back to school for my second master's in 2020 due to fear that the job market was going to be tough to navigate and I wanted to expand my skills so I could cast a wider net. I did actually learn a lot from that degree program that I am using in my personal time, but I have not gotten any jobs in that field.

Earlier this year I lost my job to the return to office trend (after I had gotten permission to move out of state and have been living here for two years). Due to the fortunate financial position my husband and I are in, I have not been looking for a new one. We bought our house two years ago for much less than we could technically afford on two full-time salaries and we are actually able to afford it on one. My "job" is now finding ways to save us money, which I consider to be just as much a salary as having a job. Going to work and getting paid is just an energy exchange, and if I can funnel that energy back into my home and my family then that's pretty comparable to me going to work. The SKIP program has been awesome for this as it is helping me to set up systems on our property and is helping me to learn skills that are actively helping us save money and will continue to help us save money. Some of the projects require an investment of materials and tools that is taking some time to acquire, but the investment is worthwhile and now when I do "assignments," I have an actual physical thing that I produced instead of just a number on a piece of paper to make me feel good about my "accomplishments."

In terms of AI and automation, people will always find ways to automate the simple tasks that are not worth their time...so they can spend more of their time on what actually matters. It will definitely shake things up, but would you rather be putting effort toward a job that a computer can't do rather than a task that is pretty useless because it can just be automated? Not saying that all tasks that AI is being used for is useless, but that is one way to use it.

Ferment four different types of things - At least one gallon per type of fermented food
 1. Vegetable (minimum of 1 required): Sauerkraut
 2. Fruit (minimum of 1 required): Chutney
 3. Vinegar (do exactly 1): Apple cider vinegar
 4. Dairy: Yogurt
   
To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 mins):
  - starting materials for each of the four different fermented things
  - preparing the fermented things before they go into their fermentation vessels
  - putting the fermented things inside their fermentation vessels
  - fermented things fermenting
  - one gallon of four different fermented things with appropriate labels

1. Vegetable: Sauerkraut
Ingredients: Green cabbage, Himalayan pink salt, filtered water
Result: 5 quarts of sauerkraut





2. Fruit: Chutney
Ingredients: Apple, pear, date, red onion, fermented cranberry sauce (cranberries, orange peel, cinnamon, whey), raisins, cinnamon, filtered water, whey
Result: 1 gallon of chutney







3. Vinegar: Apple cider vinegar
Ingredients: Apple, filtered water, a hint of apple cider vinegar
Result: 1 gallon of apple cider vinegar







4. Dairy: Yogurt
Ingredients: About 2 gallons of raw whole milk, a hint of Greek yogurt
Result: 2 batches of Greek yogurt a little over a gallon. First batch got dehydrated into yogurt cookies and second was kept as yogurt. All whey was turned into yummy berry whey soda. Sorry for the insane number of pictures for this one.

Batch 1











Batch 2

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- You must gather 12 eggs

To document completion of the BB, provide the photos or video (<2 min) of the following:
- Tell us in 1 paragraph or less about the hens/ducks/etc you are collecting the eggs from (Are they yours? A friends? How many hens?)
- A bird in the nest or nesting box
- An egg in the nest or nesting box
- A dozen eggs you have collected

Some of my chickens have started laying! They will be 6 months old in about a week. I have 26 birds, 22 of which are hens, 3 are ducks, and 1 is a rooster that I got from someone across town.

The Saggittas started laying at 4 months and I've caught some of the Plymouth Rocks laying at 5 months. I haven't caught any of the others laying yet (Americaunas, Brahmas, Columbian Wyandottes, and Bielefelders). We're at the start of November and we're getting 3-5 eggs a day. Quite a few have been double-yokers, which is exciting. At first I was finding eggs in random places on the ground and I like to think that those were each chicken's first egg and it took them by surprise.




Here is one of the Saggittas in a nesting box and you can see an egg in the box next door. This is an old cupboard I found in the barn. When I first moved the chickens out to this coop, they could almost all fit in one of these boxes and now they are huge! They also keep throwing the straw out of the boxes, so I need to figure out how to get the straw to stay in or put something down under the straw. Any suggestions?


Here's a Plymouth Rock nesting with an egg. All the straw got kicked out again.


Here is a bounty of eggs.


A dozen eggs.

So a few weeks ago one of the vertical pieces of the door broke and I had to replace it.

Through pressure testing I am learning what pieces have to withstand the most pressure and you can tell which parts these are because they are the only ones with brand new lumber.

The latch on the door has to withstand a lot of pressure and the latch I made wasn't strong enough so I cut out a notch instead of screwing on a vertical piece, if that makes sense.

You can see here the latch is bent and the vertical 2x6 on the left side of the door is split down the middle.



Here is a closeup of the latch and the weak system I started out with. The vertical piece is split and bent and does not hold up against the amount of pressure that this system requires.



Instead of screwing on a new vertical piece, I cut a notch in the horizontal piece that is already built into the side of the baler.



I installed a new 2x6 in the door and re-installed the latch.



I learned that when building with old reclaimed lumber, you do need to pay attention to where the most pressure is applied and consider getting new lumber for those components. The door has definitely caused the most problems in this project.

So my first two ended up being two inches short so I overcompensated and made another one that is about eight feet long rather than six. I made it out of wool, which was a bit difficult to weave with because it sticks to itself at times. But it looks pretty cool and it's comfortable to hold.

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- weave a leash that is at least 3/4" wide and 2 yards long (Note: the above instructions are for a leash of 55" not the required 72")
- must have a handle
- must have a swivel snap bolt/hook or other appropriate hardware to attach the leash to a collar
- must use natural materials
- must use warp-faced weaving techniques like tablet weaving or backstrap

To document your completion of the BB, provide proof of the following as pictures or a video (less than two minutes):
- the loom and materials you're starting with
- the weaving in progress
- the finished leash - showing handle, attached hardware, and possibly a ruler or tape measure

The starting materials.




Getting started.



Weaving in progress.




Sewing.





Finished.

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- build a loom capable of weaving a warp-faced fabric at least 2" wide
- weave a small sample of warp-faced cloth to show the loom works

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, provide proof of the following as pics or video (less than two minutes):  
-  your materials used to make the loom
-  the process of making the loom
-  the finished loom making warp-faced cloth

After doing a bit of research, I made an inkle loom! I roughly followed this tutorial but changed a couple things because I didn't want to use glue. I struggled with the tension peg because I didn't have any ideal materials around for that and I still didn't really understand how it worked until I started weaving but I eventually made it work. The pegs stick out about 4.5 inches, so it is definitely capable of making fabric at least 2 inches wide even though I didn't make anything that wide to begin with. I loaded it up with string and had no sense of how big it was going to be and it ended up way smaller than I thought it was going to be. The moment I started weaving and discovered that I can move one half of the strings up and down to go between the strings that are being held down by the "heddles," my brain exploded. Like it finally made sense what was happening. I could not conceive of what was going on until I got to that point. Once I started I obsessively finished the strap to see how long it was going to be and I got about 4 feet in less than an hour (I didn't do any fancy patterns), which was super super fast. I always thought weaving was going to be extremely slow.


I found this 1x4. I think it's 8 ft long.


I cut it into pieces following the tutorial I found. After I started putting it together I decided to make the upright pieces longer so I could overlap pieces and screw them together instead of gluing them.


Here are the pieces laid out with the smaller uprights based on the tutorial.


Here I swapped the smaller pieces out with slightly longer ones so I didn't have to use glue. I ended up with one 3' piece, one 1.5' piece, and two 1' pieces.


Sanded the boards a bit.


Screwed together.


Drilled holes. I didn't measure these placements at all (didn't seem super important to get these exact). I struggled with the slit and wish I had made it smaller in hindsight.


I got a 5/8" dowel and cut it into a bunch of 5 inch pegs. I later realized that I didn't have a big enough drill bit to make holes that these would fit through so I had to whittle them a bit and hammer them in (which also meant no glue but at the same time the holes weren't super straight so it's a little cattywompus (is that a word?)). I sanded these by hand.


Here is the loom!


Had a bit of trial and error with the tension peg. Will eventually replace with some purchased materials to make it nicer but it works for now.


Making the shuttle. At first I tried making it out of round wood but I kept splitting it when I tried to drill the holes. I eventually found some lumber that looked like a good size and used that. I drilled 1/2 inch holes through it and then cut it right outside the holes and then whittled it into shape and sanded the heck out of it until it was how I wanted it. If you try and drill the holes on the end of a stick you will not get the hole exactly where you want it. This thing is pretty cool and I'm glad I took the time to really sand it down.




The tutorial said to make "heddles" and I was so confused until I got to the point of threading the whole thing. This weaving tutorial was invaluable.


All set up and weaving.



I got four feet out of this. It got tighter as I went, which I was not expecting. Also the extra big part of the slit for the tension knob that I thought was a messup is actually perfect for holding the shuttle.