Meanwhile here we are, back in the spring flicker-drumming season.  “I’m going to blog about them,” I told Tom a few days ago.  “Um, honey,” he replied cautiously, “you already did blog about them.”  Good thing one of us has some brain cells left.  Tom was right–back when my only reader was my mother, I did blog about this raucous spring behavior.  Hope y’all don’t mind a timely reprise:

This week I received two e-mails from friends who want to know what they can do about their “nemesis”–the woodpecker that is maniacally drumming their house at all hours. This is a frequent spring complaint about Northern Flickers, the most common urban-suburban woodpecker. They are beautiful fawn-colored birds with black spots, long-ish bills, and pretty, dolphin-like faces. Unlike many birds, woodpeckers don’t sing–instead, they drum to attract a mate in spring, and to proclaim a territory. They rap their bills repeatedly and rhythmically on the loudest surface they can find–they love metal drainpipes, electrical transformers, AND the most resonant parts of our houses. They drive many people completely nuts.

Remember that the flicker’s goal is not to destroy your house, and they usually don’t cause serious damage–they just have a hormone-driven need to make noise this time of year. To deter them, you can tack something simple, like a length of cloth, over the bird’s favored drumming place. Birds don’t like things that move randomly, so a windsock, or a trash bag cut into streamers and hung near the birds favorite spot will help discourage them. My own tack: run outside waving a broom, and yelling, “Bad woodpecker! Go away!”

We can also try a gentle attitude shift. I truly believe it is a privilege and a delight to live alongside native, wild animals, but allowing urban wildlife to thrive sometimes requires us to tolerate a little discomfort. Woodpecker drumming usually doesn’t hurt anything (besides our nerves–oh, and of course the small matter of the 1995 Space Shuttle mission that was delayed when flickers tapped six little holes into the Discovery’s external fuel tank!). These woodpecker rhythms are heralding the season of light and fertility, and the noise is temporary (once they get into nesting they stop drumming). We can try to relax, and celebrate the role that our households play in the cycles of nature. Think of the unseen cavity-nest full of fluffy little woodpecker babies that will be helped into existence by the resonant capacities of our very own dwellings!

p.s. If flickers are drilling holes into your house, they may be seeking food rather than noise. In this, they rarely err–check for termites or carpenter ants.

There’s an essay about the spring habits of urban woodpeckers in my first book, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds.

Nice photo by Flickr user Greg7 (no pun intended). Thanks Greg7!

Outside Karen Blixen's house near Nairobi.

I wore them almost every single day, exploring Kenya and Tanzania.  When we entered a village where the women were required to wear skirts, I simply tied a kanga around my waist, over the pants.  In the heat of Africa, where a daypack added a layer of heat and sweat to even the shortest walk, I gained a new respect for my pants’ cargo pockets, which until then I’d though of as an unflattering aesthetic adornment.  On short hikes, my pants could hold lunch and water for Claire and me, a notebook, and my big field guide, The Birds of East Africa.

Lake Manyara, Tanzania

After Africa, I still wore my Pranas several times a week, on all my Pacific Northwest adventures, both urban and natural, and then climbing the ruins of Tulum last spring.  So you can imagine my despair when, while hiking in Joshua Tree a couple of weeks ago (in the Pranas, of course), Claire chimed in with, “Hey mama, I can see your undies.”  Sho’nuff.  There was a hole sprouting on my Prana bum that could no longer be ignored.

Getting rid of the pants was not an option, so when we got home I dug through the scrap bag to find a reasonably thick, but also pretty bit of fabric that would serve as a good patch.  I chose a flowered corduroy leftover from a skirt I’d made for Claire last year.  I wanted to do something a little playful, so cut the patch in the shape of a pear.

To make an applique patch:   draw your design on paper in the size and shape you want, outline this with an extra 1/4 inch, then pin to fabric and cut out your patch.  Clip curves, and press the 1/4 inch under.  Don’t be lazy like me–take the extra 30 seconds to baste the patch in place, rather than just pinning it.  For applique, I  usually like to use a blanket stitch, but since this patch would be on my bum, I thought the extra threads from blanket stitch might get caught on things, so just used little slip stitches.  I sewed the patch on with two strands of embroidery floss in a contrasting pink, then embroidered a little leaf and stem.  If we’re going to bother to repair our clothes, why not have little fun with it?

For more inspiration on clothing reclaimation and whimsy, check out the beautiful new book Sew Liberated, by Meg McElwee .  Her emphasis is not on patching per se, but many of her ideas could be applied in the area of clothing repair.

This Christmas, everyone gathered at our house.  In a quiet moment, my mother-in-law asked my Grandmother Lyanda, who is 93 years old, to tell her about her life–an open-ended question that left the elder Lyanda a bit confused.  But finally she said, “I made all their coats.”  They were my mother and her two brothers, my uncles.  And my grandma didn’t make their coats out of wool from the store, but out of adult coats that had worn through at the elbows or elsewhere.  She took them apart, reclaimed the fabric, and made them into something beautiful and new.

Grandma Lyanda Siglin this past Christmas, at age 93.

She sewed my coats, too, when I was little, also made over from adult coats. I remember a soft charcoal wool with covered buttons, a blue silk lining, and a fur collar that could snap on and off.  She made khaki coveralls for my sister and me, out of her sons’ army clothes.  She was a wonderful seamstress.  I wonder how we came to this day, where the first impulse when something is a bit worn is to replace it with something new?

What have you creatively rescued?  Clothes? Furniture? Fabric?  We’d love to hear about it.

The flowers will mature into clusters of red-purple fruits, and were eaten cooked or dried by various Washington Salish groups.  The bitter bark was sometimes chewed and applied to muscle strains.

Also called osoberry, the Indian Plum is not really very plummish.  The fruits are dry, tart, and pithy. They do gather some sweetness as they ripen, but it’s hard to get a good mature one–birds (especially robins, waxwings, and jays) eat them as quick as they appear.  But heck, almost anything tastes good if you boil it down with enough sugar and drop it into a bowl of ice cream. I’ve eaten Indian Plums that way, and they weren’t half bad.  Worth a try just to say you did, and for the reminder of everyday sustenance in the natural world.

Dear friends, I’ll be taking a short break from all things technological for the next ten days or so.  See you here when I get back.  Meanwhile…

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the last couple of years.  Friends call a day or two before Valentine’s Day, stressed out. “I have to make 30 Valentines by tomorrow, and I don’t even have the ’stuff!’  What do I do?  Do you know a simple Valentine pattern?  Help!”  (Multiply 30 x the number of school-aged kids in the family for total Valentines needed.) One friend’s Facebook update last February 13th read:  “Midnight.  60 Valentines done, 30 to go, shoot me now!”  Even Claire last year, when she had a big science project coming due and needed to practice cello, exclaimed one day, “Oh my gosh mommy, when are we going to make Valnetines?”  with a note of  anxiety in her voice.  This can’t be right, and it’s definitely not what “handmade” should be about.

Modern Valentine’s Day is a corporate manufactured celebration that might be considered optional for adults.  But it’s different for kids–the exchange of Valentines at a school party, all of them dropped into decorated desktop boxes–is a highlight of the year.  Remember all the tiny heart-and-animal cards with the bad puns?  “You’re Purrrfect, Valentine,” and the squirrel who says “I’m Nuts for You?”  They’re still out there.  Kids love to make Valentines–until they’ve made about five of them.  Then they’re often bored (and someone has to make the rest…).  I’m certainly not arguing that we should all buy our kids’ Valentines, I’m just saying this:  If it brings you and your kids joy, then get out the basket of scissors and paper and glue, and have fun.  But if it brings you stress, then good heavens, store-bought Valentines are not a crime.  Put up your feet, have a nice heart-shaped piece of chocolate, and feel the love that surrounds us all, whether we “get it all done,” or not.

See you in ten days.

Thanks to Flickr user RavenForLenore for the CC-licensed heart potato image.

Cast iron is heavy--for easy lifting, choose a dutch oven with handles on both sides.

I recall a sweet little piece called “The Pupil and the Black Pot,”  penned by a young monk for The Zen Monastary Cookbook:

It is the biggest pot I have ever seen.
It is the heaviest pot I have ever lifted.
It can feed a biblical number of people.
It can empty in an awesomely short amount of time.
It can glisten incredibly tempting.
It is one of the kitchen cornerstones.
It is one of the mute role models of monastic life, never complaining,
always ready to serve, a forever forgiving teacher.

So true!  My mother has a pot like this, and so does my grandmother, and probably your grandmother.  Their mothers had one.  Ma Ingalls packed one in the covered wagon when she traveled with her family from Minnesota to the Dakota Territories.  It’s small wonder that cast iron has endured–a nicely seasoned cast iron pan is as slick as any manufactured nonstick surface, and distributes and retains heat more evenly than any pan but copper (much better than stainless or aluminum!).  But compared to copper or good stainless, it is practically free.

My 5 quart Lodge  cast iron dutch oven was a gift from my mother a few years ago, and you can get a new one for about $30.  My cast iron skillet, which an elderly landlord gave to me in college, was a wedding gift to her when she was married over 70 years ago–it couldn’t be in better shape. Lodge is the only domestic manufacturer of cast iron cookware, still using some of their original molds, which are over 100 years old.  The pans are cast of scrap steel converted back into iron, and pig-iron ingot (an intermediate stage in the melting of iron ore).  You can get cheaper cast iron, but its hard to beat Lodge quality (cheaper pans will have hot spots, and may eventually crack with heavy use or high heat).  I love the look of good cast iron–so rich and rustic.  It moves easily from the stovetop to the oven, and I use it for almost everything.

An early autumn soup with the last of the garden tomatoes, the first of the winter squash, and lots of pretty chard. Even Claire will eat chard if I serve it with biscuits.

People fuss about seasoning, which sounds mysterious and time-consusming, but is actually very simple.  Heat the oven to 350.  Wash and dry your pan, then heat it gently over low heat on the stovetop (don’t forget about it!).  Rub the pan evenly inside and out with a neutral oil (corn is great, canola is fine), then bake in the oven for about an hour, and let it cool there before removing it.  Done!  Repeat a couple of times a year, or do a booster-seasoning if your pan seems to need it, or if you cook a particularly acidic dish.  Wipe off excess oil after seasoning, especially if you aren’t going to use the pan for a few days–you don’t want the oily surface to become sticky and rancid.  Many Lodge pots now come pre-seasoned, but it’s still nice to give them a light washing and seasoning at home before use.  The finish will just become lovelier over the years.

There is a looming myth that you will forever ruin the seasoning on a cast iron pot if you scrub it with soap.  While it’s true that a light wiping is all that is normally needed and rigorous scouring should be avoided, a little scrub with mild soap now and then won’t hurt a thing.  Dry the pan and lid well after washing to prevent rust, and if some turns up, gently remove it with steel wool.

Cast iron adds a small but measurably healthy trace of iron to our cooking.. The lid of the dutch oven is lined with prongs, which collect condensed moisture and drop it into the pot, so you can steam many vegetables without an insert, including sturdy greens like chard and kale.  Can’t beat it for sauces, soups, and stews.  In addition to stovetop frying, the skillet can be used for frittatas, quiches, cobblers, even pie– and of course it is the pan of choice for corn bread.

Simple buttermilk-cornbread accompanied last night's chili.

Cast iron is heavy, which is one of the reasons that elderly people sometimes stop using it, and beautiful seasoned cast iron will turn up at yard and estate sales, or sit unused in the back of our grandmother’s cupboard–have a look.  Expensive modern cookware gleans much of its appeal from marketing and television chef endorsements.  Cast iron will most often perform just as well (or better), and looks just as good.  I love that we can stand in this historical cookware lineage, have wonderful pots, spend very little money, and cook healthfully all at once.

For more than you could ever want to know about the care of cast-iron (including the repair of cracks), check out this website.

For the past two days I have spent most of my work hours focused on the situation in Haiti. The organization I work for has an office in Haiti, with 33 staff, all of whom were deeply affected by the earthquake, including the loss or injury of loved ones, and catastrophic property destruction.

This isn’t a bike post. This is a simple request that you pitch in. I have selected Partners in Health as the medical organization I think is the best recipient of your support at this time. They have operated in Haiti for over 20 years, are fully equipped at multiple sites, operate with low administrative costs, and are scaling up very rapidly on the ground. I have visited their main hospital site in Cange (featured in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains), and I know the quality of their work first hand.

Partners in Health has set up a new website at StandWithHaiti.org.

There are also other good agencies working rapidly to respond in Haiti, including Doctors Without Borders.

Please stand with Haiti.

Gather paper scraps, scissors, glue, glitter, and have at it.

You could add more color, but I sort of like the natural Kraft-on-cardboard look:

Now they tell us Mies van der Rohe didn’t really say, “God is in the details,” but as long as I’m playing architect, I ponder such things…

Enjoy!

This project was inspired by one of the very last issues of Craft Zine in print (now thriving online).

I’m off until after Christmas.  Peace and joy to all.

I’m not the best knitting teacher.  I’m left-handed, and knit sort of funny, and made up my own way of holding the needles.  And I’m merely competent, not  expert.  But I’ve come to realize how deeply I believe in this process–teaching one another to knit.  In this time when we learn so much through technological interface, how subversively countercultural to sit with a friend around a heap of natural fiber–wool, cotton, flax–and stand in lineage with generations of women (and men, of course, but that’s newer…) in sharing this peaceful, practical art.

So here’s a simple gift for you:  Package up some homemade knitting needles with a skein of wool, an easy scarf pattern, and a heartfelt promise to teach your friend to knit.  Choose wool rather than cotton for yarn–it is more forgiving, and much easier for learning.  This is a wonderful last minute present–you get credit for woollen-knittiness, but you don’t actually have to knit anything!

Making knitting needles is really fun.  For US size 9 needles, cut two 11 inch lengths from a  1/4 ” dowel (they can be shorter–10 inches is good for kids–or a little longer if you like).  Use an old fashioned pencil sharpener, the kind that attaches to a wall, to sharpen one end of each needle.  Sharpen it until it looks like a knitting needle, but don’t worry if it gets too sharp–you’re going to sand it down.  Take some medium-grain sandpaper and sand the whole needle, including the tip–take care with this part, the needles should be very slippery, and the tip nice and round.  Finish with fine-grain sandpaper.

Rub on a thin coat of mineral oil, furniture oil, lavender oil, or sesame oil, and use a clean cloth to wipe off the excess.

Let your imagination guide you in finishing the flat ends.  Today we used buttons, but I also like to roam the neighborhood and see what the natural world has to offer–hazelnut tops, dried seeds, and shells all work.  Stick your chosen end on with a healthy dollup of strong craft glue, and stand them in a jar to dry.

If you are an experienced knitter, you might find knitting on wood to be a little “slow,” but they are great for beginners.  And if I am crabby or stressed, I like to knit with wooden needles–something about the combination of wood and wool is very calming (I can’t explain this, you’ll just have to try it yourself!).

Pretty Ruffled Scarf
I named one of my recent knitting projects  The Sweater From Hell.  It was a pretty Mission Falls pattern, with lots of gorgeous colors, but I had to pay all kinds of attention to it while I knit, counting, and doing math.  Who wants to do math while knitting?  I kept thinking, “When I finish this sweater, it’s going straight to the homeless shelter, and I’m going to recover by knitting a one-color garter stitch scarf.”  Which is exactly what happened.  But to make the scarf a bit more fun, I put a little ruffle at each end.  I was astonished to find that I got more compliments on this scarf than anything I’d ever knit before.  Part of it might be the pretty robin’s egg blue color,  but I think it is also the combined simplicity-and-whimsy.  Anyone who has mastered garter stitch can knit this scarf.  The perfect one-skein pattern to include with your needles/yarn gift.

When my mom saw mine, she wanted one, so I knit hers in soft green alpaca.

I made these scarves of worsted, but any weight will do.  Choose needles to get the texture you want, and decide how many stitches you need for your desired scarf width.  Using worsted weight wool and number nine needles, I made an 18-stitch-wide scarf.  Cast on 4x this number.

First Ruffle:
Row 1:  Knit
Row 2:  Knit two together across row
Row 3 and 4:  Knit
Row 5:  Knit two together across row
Then knit every row until your scarf is the desired length.  Sip eggnog.

Second Ruffle
Row 1:  Knit into front and back of each stitch across row (this will double your stitches)
Row 2 and 3:  Knit
Row 4:  Knit into front and back of each stitch (again doubling)
Row 5:  Knit
Bind off looslely.

The only tricky part here is the increasing of the last ruffle by knitting into the front and back of each stitch.  But if you’ve knit yourself all the way to the end of a scarf, you’ll be ready for it–it only sounds mysterious.  Any troubles?  Knitters LOVE to help beginning knitters.  Ask, and you’ll see.  Enjoy.

Last year I went through a phase of hand sewing wool felt ornaments (Claire made some too, but declared the process “boring” and though her felt gingerbread man ornament was beautiful, she trundled off to make snowflakes as soon as he was stuffed).  This is the Amanita muscaria from a series of felt mushroom ornaments, most of which I gave to fungus-loving friends.

We love to make our gatherings from the natural world into ornaments.  Glittered pine cones are a standby.  I like hanging them top-side up.  And these dried poppy seed pods from the garden are perhaps my very favorites.  They got a glitter wash, and are wired to the branches.

Whenever I see old classical sheet music at garage sales, I snap it up.  It’s useful for all kinds of crafts.  One year we made these bells, trimmed in metal tinsel, and little jingle bells.

Several of our ornaments were made from applesauce-cinnamon dough, shaped with cookie cutters, baked, and painted.  Many have been dropped and broken over the years, but overall they are remarkably sturdy.  I made this giraffe when Claire was a baby.  The flower fairies are made of wooden beads, silk flowers, embroidery floss, and wire.  They were not created as ornaments, but somehow they always turn up on the Christmas tree.

Sometimes I’m astonished that we all do something as earthy and wonderful as bringing a real tree into our homes to celebrate the season of light.  It seems like a practice that would have, by now, been coopted by something entirely plastic.  But it hasn’t.  And though I appreciate the tree-loving sentiment that prompted author Alice Walker to call the yearly Christmas tree harvest a “massacre,” I can’t quite match it.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, most of our trees come from small family farms, grown on property that, if not for the Christmas tree farms, would be subdivided into McMansion plots.  Instead, the land brings forth trees that sustain families, nourish the air, and grace our homes.

What sorts of ornaments do you make?  We’d love to hear about them.  Meanwhile, Merry Merry.

Unlike the chickens, I am happy to wake up in the early morning darkness, and enjoy a couple of hours alone in the quiet before my sweeties get out of bed.  This week I am using these little intervals to re-read the beautiful book Slow Time:  Recovering the Natural Rhythm of Life, by Seattle writer and teacher Waverly Fitzgerald.  Waverly explores the natural rhythms of our bodies (circadian, ultradian), and the earth (day, moon, season) alongside the human-constructed notions of time (minutes, hours, weeks), and suggests ways to reclaim a more natural, peaceful, satisfying relationship to the pace of our lives. I find her work particularly relevant to my own project of cultivating a sustainable household in an urban environment.  Many of our home practices–growing food, keeping chickens, raising an unhurried child, don’t fit into the rush of a 40 hour work week.  Waverly’s book offers both understanding and practical suggestions for working with the flow of time in our lives.  Just reading the book calms me–a perfect companion for deep autumn musings.  Also see Waverly’s wonderful ezine, Living in Season.  She hasn’t actually mentioned Chicken Time, but I’m sure she would approve.