The Tangled Nest

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Cardboard Box Gingerbread House Gift Box: A Super-fun Upcycle

December 21st, 2009

Last night I was wrapping a present for Claire, and I don’t know what came over me.  The ugly old box ended up as a cardboard gingerbread house.  When Claire woke up this morning, she thought the box itself was her present.  Now we are plotting a whole upcycled cardboard box village, but I thought I’d post this, in case y’all want to try it yourself. Way too much fun.

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

BoxHouse1You could add more color, but I sort of like the natural Kraft-on-cardboard look:

HouseWindowNow 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…

HouseDoor480Enjoy!

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.

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Homemade Knitting Needles, Knitting Evangelism, and a Pretty Scarf Pattern

December 20th, 2009

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For my seventh birthday, my mom gave me a pair of light blue knitting needles and a ball of white yarn.  She didn’t know how to knit, but sent me across the backyard to our neighbor’s house, where the retired librarian Marion Milligan took me under her wing.  Marion taught me to knit and purl.  I spent hours on her springy old sofa, or on lawn chairs in her backyard, working on my practice square while Marion turned miles of fluffy pink wool into exquisitely cabled sweaters for her granddaughters as she chain smoked (RIP, Marion).   Soon I was knitting doll blankets, scarves, and slippers with big pompoms on top.  And in fourth grade I started teaching my friends to knit.

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!

NeedleTips300Making 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.

NeedlesGlassChair300Let 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.

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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.

→ 5 CommentsTags: Uncategorized, craft, knitting, simple gifts

Homemade Ornaments

December 13th, 2009

One day this week we unanimously  decided that Claire was looking much too pale to go to school.  Clearly, she had to stay home, sip hot chocolate, listen to Vince Guaraldi, and decorate the Christmas tree with me (I don’t homeschool, but I do try to keep my priorities straight–if something like, say,  a very low tide, a promising mushroom patch, or a  fairy sighting comes up on a school day, we choose the most educational option).  It’s so fun to unpack the handmade ornaments from years past (when on earth did we make all this stuff?), and plot new ones for this season.  Here’s a little tour of a few favorites:

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.

Ornaments_AmanitaFeltWe 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.

Ornament-6113Ornament-6069Whenever 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.

Ornament-6077Several 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.  Ornament-6071The 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.

Ornament-6098

Ornament-6102

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.

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The Stockings Were Hung…On Winter Clotheslines

December 7th, 2009

About a month ago, I called my friend T who, like me, is something of a clothesline evangelist.  With the rains coming and school starting, I had fallen way behind on my laundry, and finally did about four loads in one day.  I popped them all in the dryer.  “Oh my god,” I told T, “Now I remember why I used this thing!”  T’s husband MegaFlava has rigged up a beautiful indoor line in their basement (see below), but T sweetly commiserated with me.  “I know!  The same thing happened to me!  The clothes come out so warm and fluffy and fast.  I’d almost forgotten…”  We laughed.  Time to get back to it.  Dryers use a shocking amount of power to do something that the air can do naturally–outdoors or in.  But this isn’t about eco-guilt, right?  It’s about creatively sustaining ourselves and our families in ways that feel good, simple, artful, and true.  And as the right to hang clothes continues to be questioned, clotheslines–odd as it sounds–can lend a little thrill of the subversive.  So here’s one from the archive, and one of the very first Tangled Nest posts.  Africa, inspiration, and how-to:

2009_25_march_laundry-3365

Last summer the three of us traveled in Kenya and Tanzania for two months.  Our first stop was a volunteer stint at Colobus Trust on the coast of Kenya, where we worked on Colobus monkey conservation, and lodged in the organization’s simple rooms.  Our packs were light, with few extra clothes, and it was the cusp of the rainy season. When our freshly washed clothes were hung in the open-air windows, they sometimes took days to dry, even though they were under cover–the air was so thick and moist.  Midway into our week there, I’d been wearing my only dry shirt for a few days, and was starting to feel quite funky.  “Do you think they’ll ever dry?”  I lightly asked one of the staff, who lives in a village nearby.  “Oh sure,” he told me, “when the sun comes out, they’ll dry right away.”  “Well, you know how impatient we Americans are,” I joked, “used to just popping things in the dryer!”  “The what?”  “Um, the clothes dryer,” I said meekly, suddenly remembering that I was speaking to a man who’d lived his whole life with several other family members in a one-room house the size of my daughter’s bedroom, made of simple earthen materials, and without power.

Many of the people we talked to in the villages of Kenya and Tanzania know that Americans’ houses are too big, and that we own cars, but the thought of clothes dryers was inconceivable.  Using an expensive machine to do something that the air does naturally came across as profligate, idiotic, and I suppose even indecent.  At the Colobus Trust, my Kenyan friend started to laugh, and I was about to laugh along, when I realized that this was a private laugh, tinged with bitterness–a laughter I was not invited to join.  I resolved in that moment  to sever my dryer dependency.

We’d had an outdoor clothesline for some time, but in rainy Seattle outdoor clothes-drying is a part time proposition in any season.   So when we got home from Africa, we rigged up a retractable line that stretches across the length of our long basement, over the empty guinea pig cage (Nicholas and Clover, RIP), past the camping gear, and finally making a nice little curtain for Tom’s corner bike workshop.  It works great, and now we can line-dry our laundry no matter what the weather is doing.  The clothes dry in about half a day, and we almost never use our dryer anymore.  If you need your line-dryed items de-wrinkled or softened, you can pop them in the dryer for a couple of minutes before you fold them (really–two minutes is enough!).

2009_25_march_laundry-3344

We now realize that since our basement ceiling is quite high, we don’t really need the retractable line–we never take it down, so we could have just strung a rope across the room.  But for a basement with a lower ceiling, the retractable line would be nice.  In any case, we recommend using coated clothesline line, even though it’s more expensive than cotton or nylon, as the latter quickly slackens.

Our friend MegaFlava is more of a tinkerer, Make-zine type.  His basement isn’t long enough for a line such as ours, so he rigged up this amazing rack on a frame made of bent electrical conduit, and criss-crossed with clothesline.

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It lowers and raises on a pulley system, so after you hang the clothes, you can pull it up to the ceiling and still use the room.  Wet clothes are heavy, and MegaFlava had to work on balancing the pulleys so that the full clothesline could be hoisted without too much exertion.

Of course, hanging laundry on the subterranean line isn’t as delightful as time spent hanging clothes outside on a sunny day, but it is still meditative, and I find it pleasant.  Occasionally I do a simple multi-task–my two faves:  singing, or practicing recorded French lessons with headphones (yes, a clothesline Luddite with an iPod).

My dad grew up in Iowa, dryer-less of course.  He tells me about how his mother would bring the clothes in from the winter line, the shirts frozen solid as a board.  I like to  think of her, My Grandma Carrie, as I hang my family’s clothes in our warm basement.

For more, have a look at Laundry Outlaws, and my clothes-hanging tutorial.

(As always, thanks to my sweet hubby for the beautiful photos!  See more at his Flickr site.)

→ 11 CommentsTags: clotheslines, energy use

Simple Winter Sewing Project: Hot Rice Bags

November 28th, 2009

Warm face, warm ‘ands, warm feet
Aow, wouldn’t it be loverly?
–Eliza Doolittle

Ricebag-footinbed

Cloth bags of heated grain are great for warming the bed or soothing sore muscles–much cozier than hot water bottles, and a nicer quality of heat.  I kept seeing them in boutique shops with shocking price tags, and whenever I asked what the bags were filled with, the shop proprietors would say it was a secret.   But one day a few years ago I saw one that had a suspicious little pile of rice in its packaging, and as soon as I got home I whipped up a bag for myself using rice from the pantry, and added a fleece cover while I was about it (no wonder the filling was a secret–who would pay $30 for a little bag of rice?).  I made one for each of us, and for my mom and dad and sister and in-laws and sundry friends.  We don’t know how we survived past winters without them.  At our house we put the warmed bags into the bed a few minutes before we crawl in ourselves. It makes such a huge difference.  These make great simple, handmade gifts, and you probably already have everything you need to stitch a few up.  Here’s what you do:

With a piece of standard copy paper as your pattern, cut two 8 1/2 x 11″ pieces  of cotton (muslin or calico works great).  Using a 1/2″ seam allowance, sew them together on three sides, wrong sides out.

Clip corners, turn, and press.  Fold the top edge in 1/2″ and press.

Add 5 cups of dry rice.  Any kind will work–I just use whatever’s cheapest in the bulk bins at the local coop.

RicePour2

Pin, and stitch 1/4″ from the edge.  You will want to hold the heavy bag up with one hand as you sew.

Ricebag-sew

It’s nice to make the bag a cover–keeps it clean, and fleece feels so good.  Cut one piece of fleece 12 1/2 x 20 inches.  Finish the ends:  turn one of the short ends in 1/4″, and stitch.  Turn the other end under 1″ and stitch close to cut edge.  Topstitch 1/4″ inside of first stitching, if you like (this will be the side that shows on the outside).

_topstitch

With right side in, fold the end with the wider, topstitched hem up 5 3/4″ , and the side with the narrow hem down 4 3/4 “.  The edges will overlap in unequal thirds.

_cover

My mother gave me this pin cushion when I was seven. She made it when she was a Brownie, just seven years old herself. Sometimes a little of the sawdust filling comes out, but I love it.

Stitch the sides, clip the corners, and turn right side out. Slip the rice bag inside and you’re done!

_insertintocover

Take the cover off to heat the bag in the microwave.  We usually heat ours for between 2 and 2 1/2 minutes–the time will vary according to your own oven.  The first couple of times you heat it, the bag will smell like cooking rice, but this is temporary–if the bag is a gift, you may want to heat it a couple of times before you give it, so your friend won’t be alarmed.  But don’t let the bag get wet before you heat it, or the rice really could cook, and then molder (this has never happened to me, but it could, don’t you think?).

Use the bag to warm the bed, snuggle it while reading on a cold winter’s night, or apply to tense, sore muscles.  Between these bags on our toes, and the hats on our heads, we stay warm at night and, here in temperate Seattle, we’re able to turn the heat off most nights all winter.  Enjoy!

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→ 11 CommentsTags: craft, energy use, sewing, simple gifts

Hats Indoors, Nightcaps, and a Simple Gift Project–My Favorite Easy Knitted Hat

November 16th, 2009

My dad always said, “Leaper, if your toes are cold, put your hat on.”  And all of us have heard that we lose 50% of our body heat through our heads.  This last was recently debunked, sort of, by the scientific community.  Evidently the heat loss “myth” is based on murky science from the 1950s where study participants were dressed in arctic-worthy clothing, but hatless, and placed out in the freezing cold where it was discovered that the heat escaped through their heads.  If they were dressed in Speedos, we are now told, the heat would have escaped at a relatively equal rate from their entire bodies.  Thanks for that–I’ll be sure to remember it next time I’m rattling around my freezing cold house in my Speedo.  As it is, I wear woolly socks, and slippers, and two sweaters, and sometimes even fingerless gloves in a happy effort to use as little heating energy as possible as I go about my daily household tasks.  With no hat, my head is still the heat-escape route.  So I do wear a hat, and I can tell you I feel much warmer with it on; my daughter and I both wear hats indoors all day in the colder months.  We wear hats to bed at night, too.  And we have “scientific” evidence that this helps–our heating bills show that when we wear hats indoors we feel comfortable keeping the house a full six degrees cooler during the day, and it is one of the things that allows us to turn the heat completely off at night. You know how people used to wear “nightcaps?”  They were for night-time warmth before there was central heating.  Why not bring the practice back?

Soule Mama's Favorite Knit Hat 3 ways: Aubergine alpaca for me, rose for Claire, and multi-colored leftovers knitted into stripes with a tassel.

Soule Mama's Favorite Knit Hat 3 ways: aubergine alpaca for me, rose for Claire, and multi-colored leftovers knitted into stripes with a tassel.

For inspiration, I want to share my favorite knitted hat pattern.  It’s everything a knitted hat should be:  quick, easy, and super-cute. The pattern was created by Amanda Blake, and is shared on her Soule Mama blog. It can be whipped up in a day or two, or a very leisurely three, and makes a perfect winter gift for knit-worthy friends and loved ones.

If you know how to knit and purl, you can make this hat.  Knitting is the most peaceful, grounding, and practical of pastimes, and if you don’t know how to knit, I hope you’ll consider learning this winter.  There are lots of good books and online tutorials, but the best way to learn to knit is from a friend, or uncle, or sister, or mother, or neighbor.  Most local knitting shops have circles where people gather to knit and share knowledge.  You will never, ever feel like a nuisance–everyone LOVES to help a beginning knitter.

A note on Amanda’s pattern:  It is knitted on short circular needles (double pointed work fine, too), in a multiple of six stitches.  She has you start with 67 stitches, assuming you will lose one when you join the round.  If, like me, you don’t lose a stitch when you join, then start with 66 stitches.  Enjoy.

→ 7 CommentsTags: craft, energy use, knitting, seasons

DIY Haircuts–We Grow It, We Cut It

November 12th, 2009

Yup.  It’s homegrown, homecut here at the Tangled Nest Barber Shop.  My mom always cut my dad’s hair, and I grew up with bad jokes about how he was “dating a really cute barberess.”  In high school, neighborhood boys came over to have their hair cut, too.  When my mom eventually bought herself a new barber’s kit, she gave me the old one to take to college, and I sometimes cut friends’ hair, having learned from watching my mother (who had learned from watching real barbers).  But when I first married Tom, cutting his hair didn’t seem like the quickest path to newlywed bliss, so I never even considered it.  We both had our hair cut at Rudy’s–our favorite hipster Seattle shop.

Hair_snip2

Still–Tom would come home with these pretty basic cuts.  I knit, sew, and make all manner of things.  I’d cut hair in the past, with happy results.  Finally one day I looked at Tom with his fresh Rudy’s coif, and said, “Babe, I could totally do that.”  So I got a haircutting kit at the local drugstore (on sale for $25), with tolerable shears, a cape, and a buzz-clipper with various attachments.  I’ve been cutting Tom’s hair for a few years now, and he’s never looked better (if I may say so myself).

Tom admires his new cut, reflected in the chrome clippers.

Tom admires his new cut, reflected in the chrome clippers.

Hair_Cat

And does Tom cut my hair?  Yeah, um, no.  Definitely not.  But when I see my haircutter Missy, I make sure to show up early for my appointment and watch her technique.  I ask her for advice about how to deal with…what shall we call it?  Tom’s growing “sunscreen hole” (as Claire affectionately says).  And the advice is freely given.

Cutting hair is not for everyone.  Yes, it’s “just hair,” but it grows right out of our bodies, and is curiously connected with our sense of self.  Bad haircuts are not tragedies, but it is nice to avoid them whenever possible.  But if you are clever with your hands, a bit crafty, have a good eye, and perhaps have someone to advise you in the art, and if your “cut-ee” is thoroughly willing, then why not try cutting your family’s hair at home?  It saves money, is rollicking fun, the tips are great, and it’s one more step to happy self-sufficiency.

There are lots of tutorials online.  This little video is sort of dorky, but it’s pretty much exactly how I cut Tom’s hair.

Thanks to Claire who took all the photos for this post!

→ 9 CommentsTags: DIY

Cycling Inspiration: Bike Art and Bikejuju

November 8th, 2009

Confession:  I am not an intrepid cyclist.  I do love my orange bike with its big comfy seat, and its step-through frame (what we used to call a “girl’s” bike) so I can leave my little skirts on when I ride.  And I love to pedal to the grocery store, or my favorite cafe, or around the neighborhood on a pretty fall day.  But if it is raining, or there are too many hills, or my destination is far too away, or I feel whiny, I don’t ride (I do walk instead much of the time, which is not as daunting to me when facing hills or rain…).  I want to do better.

"I prefer to go by leg power."

"I prefer to go by leg power."

IV_portrait_euIn seeking inspiration, I was thrilled to discover the incredible grassroots work of Brazilian artist Valdinei Calvento, known in his country as “Cabelo.”  His work and his words evoke the strength of connection between self, community, nature, and cycling. Tom (my awesome hubby, who is an intrepid cyclist) just discovered Cabelo’s work, and published a series of three posts about it on his blog Bikejuju, featuring Cabelo’s illustration, street art, and posters.  So yes, this is a bit of family blog nepotism, but I couldn’t resist sharing a couple of my favorite images, which are followed by the artist’s lovely thoughts.

TreeBike

What is the noise of the cities today?  It is the noise of car engines, right?  It is not the noise of the birds nor the wind, it is the horns, the accelerations, and the brakes.  A city that validates bicycles permits the exchange of courtesies, of looks, of experiences, of contemplation, of gratitude.

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Bicycles have a magical effect on their riders. There are moments of reflection that only the pedals can give to us–bicycles point out a different way of looking at the world, a cheap technology, non-polluting, that humanizes and harmonizes the city and its inhabitants.

DarkDaysSMAnd while I posted a couple days ago about handmade gifts as a way to lift dark winter spirits, Tom was addressing the same issue on Bikejuju, teaming up with Go Means Go to offer the Dark Days Photo Contest, designed to “celebrate riding in the darkest part of the year, when our motivation flags, the danger increases, and the temperatures plummet.” Submit a photo with bike-related content, taken outdoors, after dark.  Bike Glow and Planet Bike have stepped up with amazing prize packages.  Details, links, and contest rules at Bikejuju.  Go for it!

Meanwhile, find a quiet moment to enjoy more of Cabelo’s beautiful work on his blog and online portfolio.

→ 2 CommentsTags: art, bikes

Simple Gifts

November 6th, 2009

Giving Lyanda

In the world of eco-hip, we are expected to eschew Christmas hype, and I am as cynical about corporate, commercial, factory-made holidays as the next person.  But I love to celebrate the turning of the seasons, and believe deeply in reclaiming the light, richness, and beauty of  Solstice/Christmas time.  I know that it’s also become eco-fashionable to “give experiences” as gifts instead of stuff.  A great idea,  so I guess I have to fess up to being somewhat materialistic when I say  I don’t want a zoo pass.  I want you to make me something.  A poem, a drawing, a leaf-rubbing, a jar of your famous plum jam, a badly knitted hat, a beautifully knitted hat.  I want something I can behold and love and kiss.  And that’s what I like to give.

For hundreds of years before Christmas was on the calendar, Europeans celebrated the return of light at the Solstice by sharing gifts, a dip into the beautifully human realization that simple gifts freely given can lift the spirit, and that in the long dark of winter, a little spirit-lifting is essential.

Still.  I have been up late on too many Christmas Eves, tearful over unfinished knitting projects.  Handmade holidays do not restore our souls if they make us feel obligated, stressed, or rushed.  But I think I’m getting the hang of it.  In the next few weeks I’ll be sharing ideas and instructions for simple handmade gifts that are easy, practical, beautiful, relatively quick, inexpensive, and can be made few-by-few as the season progresses.  I hope they bring joy.

In that spirit, the “sanctity of giving” image above is from a holiday card series by local artist Dan Cautrell, whose beautiful lino-cuts grace my new book, Crow Planet (see a sample here).  All the Crow Planet prints, as well as Dan’s other prints and cards are available through his website (when we’re not making our own gifts we can support local artists who make things for us!).

→ 6 CommentsTags: seasons, simple gifts

Slow Time (a book) / Chicken Time (a thought)

October 31st, 2009

As we move  deeper into this season of darkness, I have observed that my own impulse to cozy down into an early bedtime is mirrored by the mood of the chickens.  Starting in late summer, the girls put themselves to bed earlier and earlier every night, following the earlier sunsets, and these dark autumn mornings they look at me like I’m crazy if I open their door too early–”Why would we come out into all that cold, wet darkness, thank you very much?”  In the summer, my housesitter wondered about corralling the hens into the coop at night, and I told him not to worry–”They put themselves to bed at 9:00, and you can just close the door.”  A week ago we left the chickens in the care of the same friend.  “9:00, right?”  he asked,  Oh dear no, now they go to bed at 5:30!  I love how their little bums look, all feathery, settled in to roost for the night.  And I love following the seasons in Chicken Time.

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320_1251343Unlike 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.

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