It’s been a hot end of May but we are chipping away at the springtime “must do” list. Planting the garden, building the new perimeter fence, and keeping everything watered and alive during this heat wave has taken up most of our days.
Here’s some pics of the garden beds, most things aren’t germinated yet because they were just planted. Yeah the weather had been nice but we don’t really trust Minnesota weather to put tender plants out any earlier than the last week of May. We’ve been burnedfrosted too many times!
You can see in the 3rd photo that those beds are beyond a fence… That will soon be contained within our new perimeter fence. Gotta get that installed before the corn pops up and the deer find it!
Also used this hot weather to wash a few skeins of yarn I finished in the last week. 3 skeins of alpaca and 1 of angora rabbit from a friend. The rabbit’s name was Theodore and I’m pretty sure it’s the absolute softest thing I’ve ever touched 😍 I can hardly stop squishing it and saying “oh my god it’s So. Soft.”
Anyway, using this heat to quickly dry yarn is one perk I suppose. Now, back to finish watering the garden… 🌱
Have you ever woven cotton yarn into a hand towel to use in your home? This spring I’ve had the joy of teaching people how to do exactly that!
Some students had no experience with weaving, while others had woven before but wanted to try a new type of project. Using pre-warped 16” Ashford rigid heddle looms and a variety of cotton yarns, class attendees left with a handwoven hand towel to use in their home.
What does it take to prepare for a class like this? Well, for the attendees, they just have to show up and be ready to learn. Easy peasy! For the teacher, it’s a bit more involved:
I create handouts with info on the looms, yarns, project details, and techniques. I also type up ‘instructor notes’ to keep myself on track.
The loom for each student gets warped before the class. (Warping means all the ‘vertical’ white yarns that you see in the picture get put onto the looms ahead of time. In class the students weave in the weft ‘horizontal’ yarns.) The warping process takes about 1.5 hours per loom.
All the yarns get purchased and packed along with all the clamps, shuttles, pick-up sticks, scissors, pins, needles, the sewing machine for hems, etc.
On the day of class there’s about an hour of setup and an hour of clean up.
Even though the warp yarn is all natural colored cotton, there are still endless ways of weaving the weft yarn in to create a fun pattern! Since these classes were held in springtime, I bought yarns in a spring color palette. Folks had the option of weaving either a plain over-under weave or trying a more complicated pick-up stick windowpane pattern using any combination of patterns or colors they wanted. Take a look at the variety of towel designs woven with just 2 pattern and 7 color options!
I brought the sewing machine along to sew the hems, but many chose to knot the fringes on their towels instead. Either option works, though knotted fringes do have a tendency to wear out with very frequent use just because the ends of the strings fray over time. But it does lend a beautiful homemade touch!
When I was learning to weave I never thought I would get to the point of being able to teach others… not only did I feel like I didn’t know ‘enough’ to teach, but I was always the shy kid in school who would rather go live under a rock instead of doing any kind of public speaking. Through teaching my family and friends about weaving I realized I was able to share the joy I find in the craft with others by showing them how to do it too. It is so exciting to teach someone how to use simple tools to turn yarn into fabric and hear them say “oh my gosh, I’m making fabric! This is so cool!”.
Yeah, it really is so cool!
These weaving classes were hosted through the Itasca Area Schools Collaborative and their Community Education program. New classes are held twice a year in a wide variety of topics, and I’ve had a lot of fun teaching through their community ed program.
I also offer individual or small group lessons for specific projects, or can help tailor an intro-to-weaving program for a larger group like I did with the Deer River High School art class students this spring. Get in touch and let’s weave! -Shara
Whoa has the summer flown by, and now it’s winter! We spent most of the summer building the new high tunnel greenhouse for our market garden, beginning construction of the mill shed for the sawmill, attending our first farmers markets, and prepping for two craft markets this winter.
This coming Thursday, December 4th we’ll be at Rapids Brewing in Grand Rapids for the Wild Winter Fair!
Visit our booth to check out our selection of: – Handwoven rag rugs (unique, and machine washable!) – Solid hardwood cutting boards (durable and gorgeous!) – Handmade back scratchin’ sticks (functional and adorable, made from real sticks!) – A selection of wood furniture and handwoven scarves
AND – we’re offering a very unique gift idea for the curious person in your life: gift certificates for one-on-one forest consulting services with Casey or weaving/spinning lessons from Shara.
See you at the Wild Winter Fair!
Craft fair recap: On November 8th we had the pleasure of selling our crafted items at the Zion Lutheran Church’s Wandering Reindeer Bazaar. We had a lot of fun talking with visitors about our products and making good connections! Our spinning wheel (named Emily) is always a big hit at markets; she is hypnotizing to some… We forgot to take photos during the event but here’s a snapshot of our booth and some of the items:
Happy holidays to you all, and if you’re still shopping for a gift for someone special this season we hope you’ll shop local and support small businesses like ours this season!
A while back, we had the opportunity to harvest some really spindly, small red pine from a grove which had never been thinned. A custom sawyer milled them for us at 2 1/4″ to give us the chance to use them for something. That time never really came because it’s very tedious to cut live edge off a board with a table saw. Today, we have the sawmill to help with this and it is uniquely designed to cut rounded, bumpy edges off a piece of wood! Just clamp it in and it is held securely while a flat, straight cut is made.
We also discovered these pieces all twisted after drying, too. This is caused by the uneven growth rate throughout the tree’s life. They grew quickly for the first 10-15 years and then became overcrowded and grew very slowly for the remaining 50 years.
Note the wide rings at the center and the narrow rings at the edges.
By clamping one end of the piece square to the mill, the twist can be cut out by removing wedge-shaped slices from each side. In this case, a 2.25″ thick piece of twisted wood will become a 1.75″ thick piece of flat wood.
A stack of finished, flat lumber
Since these pieces have already been dried and warped before re-sawing, their flatness will be much more durable than if they were fresh cut. We still have nearly 100 of these boards left to square up to build the floor of our future sawmill building!
When you’re going through your lumber piles and find some thicker timbers or beams (without nails!) that have dried or warped in challenging ways, keep in mind that re-sawing them is a way to put them back to use. Check out our Custom Milling page for more information.
Every month on the first Friday, Grand Rapids hosts an art walk in the downtown area near Old Central School. We had the privilege of attending as artists on behalf of Free Range Food Co-op on June 6th.
There was an educational table introducing visitors to the process of harvesting, washing, and preparing wool. We had a basket of hand-spun yarn samples made by Shara to show different textures and sizes.
We demonstrated spinning on the new Ashford Traveler wheel, which was a big hit. Having a handcraft in motion seems to invite conversation and questions about what’s going on.
Free Range Food Co-op is working to open a community owned grocery store right now, so we also had a “community weave” project where visitors could add a few pieces of fabric or yarn to a small wall-hanging project on the rigid heddle loom. It symbolizes the process of combining smaller pieces into a larger, more beautiful and impactful community project.
The budding inventory of wool scarves, cotton rugs, and decorative transparent tapestries available for sale on display at the art fair.
Check out our Fiber Craft page for more information on spinning or weaving lessons. Contact Shara to see what’s available for sale or to discuss a custom project.
Recently, we had the opportunity to mill two large logs from a 90 year old peach-leaved willow that came down in a storm. At first, we were skeptical it would yield much good lumber because willow are known to be susceptible to heart rot. But these 20 inch diameter logs had a lot of great grain figuring caused by heartwood staining and the early stages of decay while still being solid.
These beautiful logs were mostly cut into 2.25″ live-edge slabs to be used for making small tables or 1″ thick pieces for shelves where the live edges add to the character of the piece. Some shorter logs were cut even thicker to be used as benches. They were all left at full width with live edge on both sides for maximum flexibility in future use – they can be cut down to clean, square lumber later if needed.
These pieces have been stacked to dry and are available for sale as-is or they can be re-sawed and customized to fit your next project. Check out the Custom Milling page for more information.
When we established our garden, the fine soils and lack of slope made growing difficult. The ground would easily flood and then stay saturated for a long time, setting back soil temperatures, cultivation, planting, and harvesting. To alleviate this, we began using raised beds. This creates growing space that’s higher in elevation than the surrounding walkways, leaving it with better drainage, aeration, and sun exposure. Together, these improvements have allowed soil work and planting to occur 2-3 weeks earlier than before.
After a couple years of shaping them by hand with shovels and rakes, it was clear that the benefits of raised beds were worth investing in equipment to make the process faster and easier. We now use a “rotary plow” on the BCS 2-wheel tractor to throw soil from the walkway onto the planting bed. This creates an elevation difference of 6-10″ between the beds and the 12″ wide walkway. It is a fast implement to run, shaping a 100 foot raised bed in about two minutes.
If you have challenging soil holding you back, let us shape up some raised beds and start enjoying a more productive, healthy garden. Contact Casey or learn more at our From the Garden page.
Wild Edges Farm 