~eat love not fear~

The thing I love most about my work as a librarian is connecting people and resources: it's sort of thrilling, like matchmaking. So when Jenny the Lokel Yokel wanted me to come and celebrate her new solar clothes dryer and share the recipe for homemade laundry soap, I was all for it in the spirit of sharing good ideas that help families be healthy and save the planet.

She blogged about it here. And in the post, you can see that I am wearing this nifty blue tee shirt (Anne Klein, thrifted for $2.99, even more awesome). I wanted to give you some closer-ups of it because it is so fab. It's a collaborative effort between the Lokel Yokel and the CraftingMamaLibrarian: designed and conceived together. She silk-screened it with a low-tech method she saw on YouTube that makes me think of the 80s show MacGyver, if he had been into craftyness---using an embroidery hoop and Mod Podge! So thank you, Jenny, the most excellent MacGyver of crafting!

Eat Love Not Fear. The slogan makes me think of my happy chickens who feel the warm sunshine on their feathers, who nibble up a fat worm, chase after a delicious moth, and scratch up the compost. It's about choosing foods that were raised with love and sunshine and rain, knowing your farmer, knowing your chickens.

If Jenny goes into mass production, I will let you know! Or you could friend The Birchwood Motel on Facebook!

Greening Your Laundry

new A-line skirt

with gorgeous linen Japanese fabric from Alewives

Seems like the word is getting round to bloggers in Maine about the goodness of homemade laundry soap. You may have read it here first, but look who else is on the homemade kick! And some laundry sweetness, as well as a CraftingMama shout-out, is here also on the blog of Little Bits and Bobbin (if you need to know how much I love this gal, check this post out. swoon.)

cleaning products:

homemade scouring powder and toilet-cleaning supplies

I am also pleased to tell you that on June 23rd, Wednesday @ 11 a.m., I will be giving a demo/talk about greening your laundry at the Birchwood Motel in Camden, ME. Read this post about how Jenny and Eric are making green choices for their local business: making their own laundry soap and installing a gorgeous new laundry line is just a start. Think about how awesome it would be to sleep on sun-dried sheets, laundered without chemicals, the next time you stay in a motel! The workshop is free and participants will go home with a sample (and laundry soap recipe), as well as resources about alternatives to chemicals in our homes.

To register, Friend/Like the Birchwood Motel on Facebook and leave your RSVP there!
New PJ pants around here. In the photo above, Sylvan models his new pair in a fabric called Hedgehog Love (also from Alewives). What is not to love about THAT? The sad news is that I underbought fabric for these, which means that I am not readily embracing the true size of this boy who was/is my baby.

For the extra long-leggedy one, Jonas, I knew that I needed quantity. I used a pattern from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross, Pajamas for Everyone, and I made the ADULT size Small. I thought, Oh Ho, I can just whack off a bunch of length and they'll fit him fine. Well, I am here to tell you that I did not do any chopping of any length. My 11 year-old boy who was/is my baby is also really the size of a small adult (in height, anyway). Wow.

Hanging the Laundry

Today is a perfect laundry day: sunny, dry, windy. I think you already know about my love of clotheslines and hanging my family's clothes outside. I like the whole process, from the pins to the colors to the way everything smells when I take it in at the end of the day. I especially love it when I round the corner on the road and see the clothes on my line flapping there, colorful and cheery. Here's a painting that I love by the artist Edith Vonnegut (yes, daughter of Kurt) called Hanging the Laundry. My mom owns it so I get to admire it when I visit her!

What I really hate is folding a big pile of clothes from the dryer, like this mountain of clothes.

This is unless I have an audio book to listen to on the iPod, which I don't at the moment. Right now I have been listening to this wonderful foodie podcast by Molly Wizenberg, the author of a Homemade Life. It's called Spilled Milk and you can subscribe to it for free! (I am partial to the episode they did on Junk Food. Which is OK, since I am not eating it, just enjoying it vicariously.) The two hosts, Molly and Matthew, are funny, quirky and I feel like I am hanging out with friends in the kitchen, cooking.

Here's another thing I love: Making my own laundry detergent. Sure, as a cost-saving measure, but also to know exactly what goes into cleaning my clothes. I got the recipe from the magazine Mary Jane's Farm, and it is made from a 76 oz. box of Borax, a 55 oz. box of washing soda, 2 lb. box of baking soda, and a 12 oz. bar of soap (grated, I used Tom's of Maine lavender). It makes about 1/3 of a 5-gallon bucket (total cost about $10), which is what I mixed mine in, and get this: you use 2 TABLESPOONS per regular load. Seriously. And when I put it to the test (sweaty work-out clothes, grass stains) the results were fab: clean clothes, no weird chemicals or additives. ***The one thing to note is that this is for cold water washing only, as there is some sort of potential for Borax being partially converted to hydrogen peroxide at warm/hot temps.***

Do you have a clothesline? Do you have a method to your clothes-hanging madness? (Organized by type of clothing, the person who wears it, whatever the heck your hand touches next in the basket, etc.) Do you fold your clothes outside or bring them in to fold? Readers in foreign lands, do please tell us about your clothesline experiences! I would love to know.