A New Heartsease...

Caring For Bamboo and Wooden Knitting Needles

This is a small sampling of my collection of wooden and bamboo knitting needles.

 

    I love knitting with bamboo and wooden needles. They simply feel good in my hands and I enjoy their organic texture, warmth, and smoothness particularly when I'm using natural fibers and yarns.

    Wooden and bamboo needles have their pros and their cons. In the "pro" list they are wonderful for those who suffer from arthritis and hand-cramping because they're naturally warmer than metal needles and hold the warmth from your hands longer.

    They also tend to conform to the user's hand because of their light flexibility. Bamboo and wood truly become yours as they slightly flex with use to your own hands and fingers.

    Square and round wooden needles may be found in yarn shops and fabric stores that also sell knitting supplies. They're easily found on-line in greater variety, as well.

    Vintage wooden needles may sometimes be found in antique stores and at flea markets. Rosewood is a luxurious traditional and modern favorite. Many are made of hardwoods.

    Square wooden needles with their four-sided shafts are reputed to produce more consistent stitches. They're also good for arthritis suffers as they're less slippery, reducing the need to grip them as tightly...and as with bamboo, slightly conform to your hand and grip.

    In the "con" column is that bamboo and wooden needles are generally more expensive. And, they're not as consistently sized as metal needles. Also they may break when yarn tension is tight or hasn't any flex to it.

    Wooden and bamboo needles are best with man-made, natural, and organic fibers that have some give, or a bit of stretch. Knitting with fibers that aren't flexible, especially with narrow, smaller-sized needles may cause them to break...not a problem with metal needles.

    The tips of both bamboo and wooden needles are prone to dulling and damage if not protected. The best way to store them is in a protective sleeve (save and use the one they came in) where tips will be protected from abrasion and dulling by bumping into to harder objects.

    Wooden and bamboo needles require additional care, as well. While they will pick up some natural oils from your hands or from knitting with organic wool, they should be moisturized at least once a year, especially if not used regularly. They're more susceptible to breakage if allowed to dry out due to either irregular use or long periods of disuse.  

 

    

To clean and moisturize my needles, I use a homemade lavender-scented wax/balm.

 

    It's not necessary - usually - to wash knitting needles. However, they should never be soaked or subjected to harsh scrubbers or chemical cleaners. All that's normally required is a gentle application of wax and buffing the excess away with a clean cotton cloth before storing them. Do this once a year, at least. Twice a year is recommended, although I claim to do it only once a year myself.

    I wax mine in late Spring or early Summer as I tend to knit less frequently during hot weather. This way they're ready for when I pick them up for Fall and Winter projects.

    I've heard that needles may be rubbed with waxed paper or beeswax, as well. My preferred method is the recipe that follows:

Knitting Needle Wax:

3 TBS olive oil

2 TBS melted beeswax pellets (or grated beeswax)

10  - 15 drops lavender essential oil (cedar or rosemary essential oils are nice, too.)

    In a small pan gently heat the olive oil. Add the beeswax and stir with a bamboo skewer until melted. Allow the mixture to cool until it just begins to turn opaque. Stir in the lavender essential oil completely and pour into a lidded tin. Allow to cool and harden. Add a label (this needle wax makes a nice stocking stuffer for your knitting friends). Tins may be purchased online, where essential oils are sold - often at health food stores - or may be recycled and cleaned for use from other products you may have on hand.

    For an anti-bacterial wax, substitute the lavender oil for tea tree oil.

    You may also use rose oil, lemon, or any other essential oil or a combination of oils that you like to add a pleasant scent.

    Herbal and floral essential oils, or your own herb-infused oilds- with healing properties may be substituted to make a lip balm for chapped lips using this same recipe. The balm may soften or liquefy on hot days or if carried in a pocket.

    This same recipe may be used as a healing salve for scrapes and scratches, rashes, or mild irritations, as well. Simply add 1 TBS fresh or dried calendula petals as you heat the olive oil. This makes an infused oil. Allow the petals to steep in the cooling oil for at least four hours - longer is fine, even up to a couple of weeks - then strain out the petals discarding them. You can substitute plantain leaf, comfrey leaf, chickweed, or chamomile flowers, or lavender buds to infuse the oil, all of which will add their healing and soothing properties to the salve.

    If you don't have beeswax you may use melted coconut oil in a one part olive oil to one part coconut oil mixture, then add your selected essential oil/s. This olive oil and coconut oil combination may also be used as a gentle, underarm deodorant. Go light on adding essential oils as some may be irritating to sensitive skin areas. Lavender and chamomile essential oils are generally safe choices. Don't use eucalyptus oil as it is irritating in any quantity, (but great for use in homemade cleaning products for toilets and basins).

    P.S. Knitting is good for you! It's not only relaxing, it can decrease heart rate and blood pressure, and is therapeutic for mental and emotional issues. Knitting reduces stress. It's also fun and you'll end up with something great to wear or to give away.

 

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Creating A Balcony "Garden" Room

Created with items I already have, my balcony has now become an outdoor "garden" room! "Party" lights strung around the perimeter of the balcony walls add a festive feel to evenings on the balcony.

 

    I love my cottage-style condo at the edge of the woods!

    I love my balcony that looks into an old crab apple tree that changes her "dress" from season to season and provides food for all manner of wildlife. I love the leafy screened privacy it provides to the balcony, all the while acting as my personal window-on-nature.

    I also love that my balcony is covered so that I'm able to utilize it as an outdoor space year 'round. 

    I've always wanted an outdoor garden room but I'd already decorated my balcony with a chair, a chaise lounge, and plant stands in a rather typical manner. However, this Spring I decided that just because something was done one way, it didn't mean it had to stay that way. 

    I also love that I was able to decorate my new garden room using items I already owned! Money not spent is money saved!

    After moving the chaise down to the garage, I scavenged my slip-covered love seat from my office where I seldom ever sat on it. Then, I removed the old rug from the entry way where it resides in Winter to soak up rain and snow melt.     

    In Spring, Summer, and Fall, the rug is rolled up and stored under my bed. Now, it will add to my balcony decor until next Winter instead of taking up space under the bed.

    The vintage "yard long" print of roses was also salvaged from my office and replaced over the love seat in its new balcony location. A white-painted oak TV tray/side table, lace runner, and lamp were removed from my office, too, leaving one wall pretty bare!

    The glass-topped, wrought iron table once sat at the side of the chaise. Now, it serves as a coffee table in front of the love seat. The love seat is comfy and I can choose to sit, or recline on it.

    My garden room wouldn't be complete lest there was a comfy chair for my feline friend, Junie.

 

With a pillow beneath a fabricated cover that can be removed for laundering, Junie has his own chair on which to nap and watch birds visiting the apple tree.

 

    The weather is still a bit nippy for spending much time enjoying my new garden room, but with days beginning to hit the 50-degree mark, it won't be long until I'm spending more time outside!

 

A lamp next to the love seat assures that I'll be able to spend summer evenings reading while waiting to watch the moon rise or listen to night sounds.

 

    My new garden room is a bit "cottage", a little shabby-chic...with a few "farm-style" touches in the form of a galvanized washtub, and an "out-of photo" feed bucket.

 

When not being used as a cachepot for potted herbs, this galvanized tub serves as farm-style wall art.

 

Galvanized pitchers, tubs, and buckets make nice cache pots for nursery-potted plants and herbs.

 

    More galvanized buckets will emerge from the storage room to act as cache pots for flowering plants as the Season progresses. Because our growing season is short here, as it was in Utah, I often don't re-pot nursery-purchased plants. Instead, I simply slip them into a bucket where they happily grow until the first hard frost. The bucket keeps leakage off the wood deck of my balcony.

 

Galvanized buckets make great cache pots for nursery-potted plants. In time this bucket will attain that delightful patina of old galvanized metal. Time and weathering will do the trick in a season or two.

 

A lidded dish on the painted tray-table adds a bit of homey decor.

 

On the wall opposite the love seat, I've created a montage using items from the gardens of my old folk-Victorian farmhouse in Utah.

 

My new outdoor room blends seamlessly with my indoor spaces.

 

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On Thanksgiving...

 

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

    On thinking about Thanksgiving Day, a menu has been decided, a table setting arranged based on who and how many will be in attendance, the groceries secured, a plan of action set down for the day before and the day of the Feast.

    It occurs to me that one day a year is set aside for a National day of giving thanks, while just about every other Holiday (perhaps excepting Easter to some degree) has been co-opted by the forces of marketing and consumerism. Thus, we find ourselves at an odd crossroads in our evolution as a culture...

    ...by having the strange juxtaposition of a day of thanksgiving quickly followed by the sinister-named "Black Friday" when deal-seeking, money-waving, mania-maddened multitudes mob merchandisers (Ahhh...how I love alliteration!).

Okay, I realize the name, "Black Friday" arises out of the idea that rampant and collective consumerism on this day will put businesses in the "black ink" column. At least that's the idea.

Still, the concept that frenzied acquisition follows immediately upon the heels of gratitude and thanksgiving can only be the wayward "child" of Capitalism. Not that Capitalism is a bad thing...unless it becomes the "only" thing.

Capitalism becomes questionable when it subsumes, consumes, and ideates a society to the exclusion of the "un-dollar-able" values to be found within the heart and the soul of a people and their society. 

For me Black Friday has become - not a time to shop - but a time to retreat from shopping. Instead, I light the candles, turn on quiet music, pick up the journal and pen, and make a cozy cup of herbal tea. I make myself comfortable and with pen in hand list all that I am grateful for over the past year. 

I thank the God of my Heart for abundance, health, family, friends, lessons learned (from the joyful to the painful), and retreat for a time from the noise, expectations, seduction, chaos, glitz (and the false promises that stuff will make me happy and fulfilled) and simply sit quietly within that sublime inner space where head and heart meet and commune with Soul.

I wish everyone all of the love, delight, communion with others, and thank-fullness, abundance and feasting that Thanksgiving Day offers. And, safety, sanity, and success if you choose to join the Black Friday fray...and of course, blessings, and abundance throughout the Holiday Season to come!

Ship Shape...

 

The Jubilacion where I spent an enjoyable few days with my Dad and Sandy.

 

My Dad's mooring line and dock hose are shipshape and tickity boo.

 

His neighbor's, well...not so much!

 

    I had a lovely few days visiting Seattle's Elliot Bay Marina, where my Dad and step mom, Sandy, recently returned from their annual six months cruise up into Canadian waters. 

    I drove over from Northern Idaho to visit with them on their cruise boat, Jubilacion, just ahead of their heading back home to Redding, California.

    Sandy and I took a long walk through parts of Discovery Park and photographed each other on a fern-bordered trail.

 

I'm enjoying a fern-bordered stroll through Discovery Park.

 

As Sandy takes my picture, I snap hers.

 

Viewed from Jubilacion's deck, the land-based part of the marina was in full-on Autumn mode!

 

Aboard the Jubilacion

 

Jubilacion...first boat at the bottom of the gangway on the right.

 

    As my visit coincided with chantrelle hunting back home, I stopped at Whole Foods Market in Seattle and bought some fresh chantrelles, fresh thyme, and a shallot, and the night my Dad fixed his famously delicious spaghetti, I whipped up a side dish of sauteed chantrelles. Delicious dinner. Great company! A most enjoyable mini-vacation!

    While aboard, I enjoyed my own private stateroom - an approximate four-foot by four-foot compartment with bunk beds that I named, my "Cozy Cubby. Despite being small, the upper bunk I occupied was comfy and cozy!

    As of now, Daddy and Sandy are already planning next year's six-months long cruise!

    

    

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

October!

 

Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves.
~Humbert Wolfe, P.L.M.: Peoples, Landfalls, Mountains, 1936

 

 

I Love A Place Where Deer...

 

 

    I love living in a place where deer feel at ease enough to have a "lie down" beneath my balcony.

 

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How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

~Emily Dickinson, letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880

Eat Your Broccoli! All of It!

 

The stalk is actually the tastiest, tenderest part of broccoli! Really!

 

    The trimmed stalks of broccoli are wonderful for raw eating. Use them in healthy appetizers such as crudites for dipping or chopped for salads. Or, you can steam them, chopped, right along with the budding tips.

    First, stalks need to be trimmed. With a sharp kitchen knife cut across the stalk where it starts to branch into its budding tips. You may need to trim the bottom end if it's uneven so that you can stand it vertically on a cutting board for safe trimming.

    I usually cut the stalk in half and trim it in two parts for safety and stability. Carefully holding the stalk at the top away from each edge you'll be trimming, use the knife to slice away the thin, tough outer skin, slicing downward. Work all the way around the stalk, carefully so as to not nick your fingers. Then, chop raw onto salads or slice and serve with other sliced, raw veggies such as, carrots, celery, and asparagus.

    Dipping veggies, instead of potato chips, into Ranch dressing/dip is a traditional and healthier way to snack.

    Or, chop the stalk and add it to a pan along with its budding tips for steaming!

 

Eat your broccoli! It's rich in vitamins, minerals, and cancer fighting properties!

 

 

 

Poults On Parade!

 

    I heard "gobble, gobble" as I sipped my morning dande-ccino (roasted dandelion cappuccino) whilst sitting at my front porch bistro table doing a crossword puzzle!

    Looking over the railing I saw this flock of wild turkeys with their poults/chicks meandering over the lawn. I wondered if one of the hens was the one who'd chased me down the trail a few of weeks ago when I'd encountered her on my forest walk. Mama hen was sitting not only on the trail but on a batch of about eight tiny chicks. That mama chased me for a quarter mile to protect her chicks! 

    These chicks are quadrupled in size to those I'd seen just weeks ago. I counted 17 babies in the combined group of a couple of hens and one tom.

    I just love the wildlife that wanders through the common and garden areas of the forest-side condos where I live!

    It seems the chicks are old enough that the parents feel the babes can be taken away from the nest to learn how to forage for food like the "big birds".

    Wild turkeys are very much like chickens in their habits and body language...only much bigger.

 

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Encounter With Wildlife...A Turkey Hen and Poults

 

On my morning forest walk I encountered a protective hen with her chicks, also called "poults"

 

The forest path where I walk in the morning

 

    So, I'm ambling happily along seeing what's in bloom, what's ready to gather, and simply enjoying a late Spring morn in the forest close to home. 

    I'm looking at the ground and when I look up, there in the middle of the trail is a wild turkey nestled down in front of me. My first thought was that she was hurt. She made no attempt to move so I thought I'd just skirt around her.

    When I got to about two feet away she jumped to her feet. Beneath her were about eight wee, fluffy chicks running in tight circles, startled by the sudden removal of their shelter and warmth.

    Mama turkey faced off with me and I backed up and turned around and headed back the way I'd come.

    Thankfully, she wasn't as aggressive as a goose or swan would likely have been and I was able to escape at the pace of a fast walk with her right behind me. She "chased" me for nearly a quarter of a mile. I kept thinking that she'd turn back to her chicks but she wanted me far, far away from them. Finally she ran up the bank and back toward them. I had to take a longer way home instead of the shortcut I'd intended but it was worth the extra distance to have seen something so precious as those fluffy babies and to experience the maternal instincts of a wild creature smaller than me. Thankfully, that wild creature was not a bear!

    My condo is so close to the edge of the forest that deer, wild turkeys, and quail are often seen passing through our garden areas. I treasure their presence with a sense of wonder and delight. Although the deer do munch on our landscaping, I've discovered that pinning a scented dryer sheet beneath something they like to snack on keeps them away from it.

 

Last Spring on the same trail I awakened this young buck from his early morning nap as I walked by.

 

 

 

In Full Flower!

 

A close up of crab apple flowers. The blossoms are many times bigger than the fruit that follows.

 

    The fruit of this apple tree, beloved by birds and animals is too tart for humans. It's also too tiny to utilize for canning or cooking and would take lots of sugar to tame its tarty nature.

    Lying out on the balcony the other day I became aware of a lovely floral fragrance. Less bold than lilac, lighter that a rose, less cloying than gardenia or jasmine - I can only describe the light sweetness by what it is not. This gentle, sweet fragrance wafting and filling balcony and the rooms beyond must be the apple tree. The mock orange had since ceased to bloom. Nothing else could be the culprit that might be nearby.

    It must be the apple tree. It simply must! Each blossom's subtle aroma compounded by many thousands until it became knowable to my nose.

    Sticking my nose into a bundle of blossoms...Yes! It is the crab apple! When living at the Cottage I grew Red Rome Beauties and Mackintosh apples for eating, juicing, canning, but never caught a whiff of a scent from those smaller, but productive blossoms.

 

This tree cools the sun-heated air that enters my home on its warm south side.  The wee, moist exudations of hundreds of thousands of leaves mitigates heated air passing through its canopy and thus to me and into my home. Want to cool your home? Plant a tree to shade its hot south side!

 

    Windows situated away from its influence on the same south side  must be closed on warm days to keep my home cool.

    Beauty, blossoms, cooling, attracting wildlife, soft sweet fragrance! It's all here in this lovely tree.

 

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Crab Apple Notes:

    Crab apples make wonderful pollinators for apple trees humans like to grow and eat.

    Crab apples bear the loveliest blossoms of the entire apple family. From white, to shades of pink, and into deep rose, crab apples will adorn orchard or garden with a spectacular Spring show.