A blog about creating a homestead with gardening and home crafts.
Blocking is the penultimate step in garment knitting. (The last step is usually weaving in ends.) Blocking is the act of submerging a knitted garment in water or steaming it, to get the required form of the garment and to "relax" the stitches in order to get the best fit possible. This helps the garment mesh together to construct cohesive fabric. It is like a spa treatment for your hand knits.
Vanilla is an expensive commodity because since there are no natural insect pollinators like the Melipona Bee in other places, vanilla flowers have to be hand pollinated, a very delicate process, in order for each flower to produce any seed pods...
Time to read 7 minutes Once you have taken the time to sow, grow and harvest your own vegetables, it's equally important to know how to conserve and store your produce so you enjoy your harvests well into the winter months. Here are a few tried and tested ways I have stored some of the... Continue Reading →
Time to read 5 minutes During the pandemic, bartering helped me to grew my local connections, helped me to learn new skills and ultimately, got me into knitting. At the time, we lived in Bristol. I worked from home and I had the time to tend to a lot of plants. I bought, propagated and... Continue Reading →
Time to read 2 minutes Recreation is pretty important in our home. My husband and I love competitive games and we had a few dead zones on our property which was not suitable for planting in, which would be my first choice but we managed to create a few additional areas where we can play... Continue Reading →
Time to read 9 minutes Gardening brings so much value and joy so it would be a mistake to believe you need a large garden and full sun to be able to do so effectively. I currently live in USDA Zone 9a and while I don't have a lot of vegetable growing space, my garden... Continue Reading →
If you're struggling with dry, flaky scalp or would just like to make a simple, natural treatment that feels cool and refreshing to the scalp and will stimulate the hair follicles to promote growth, read on for the scalp oil recipe I devised to nourish my own problematic scalp.
Time to read 7 minutes 2022 saw many finished objects under my belt, but something strange happened to me from about August. Yes, I continued knitting on wool and mohair garments throughout the sticky summer but once I had banged out a few sweaters and cardigans for myself in the first half of the year,... Continue Reading →
Time to read 4 minutes I have been knitting since 2020 (haven't we all?). As a self taught knitter who spent about 8 months of 2020 trying to self-draught now completely unwearable and/or unflattering garments, I feel 2022 brought with it some improvements. I’ve had some challenges in life recently which incidentally has led me... Continue Reading →
Time to read 3 minutes I grew up in a suburb of West London. In a three bed terraced house with a large garden. I remember it had a metre-wide border that flanked the length of it to the left and an expansive low fenced area to the right. Within these diligently tilled cordons, my... Continue Reading →
All Homesteading 