Category: homeMADE

Categories
foraging homeMADE wild inklings

Wild Inks

✒️🌱: Testing and bottling wild inks to bring to Saturday’s workshop. This is the scrap paper I put down to protect the counter and do quick checks. Isn’t it pretty??

Every splotch and blotch on this paper came from a plant, and can be made at home. From wild grapes and acorn caps and chokecherry berries and…

Some of these colours last longer and truer on the page than others. But what makes them beautiful isn’t limited to how they look on paper.

🐾🌱: Using wild inks reminds me of tracking animals in the winter. When I come across the tracks of a coyote or a bunny, it’s like hearing their echo. Like they’re there. And when I open a bottle of ink I made from a plant, I see sumac’s red panicle in winter and the sphinx moth I met on the grapevine.

🐞⏳: In searching for colour, I learn about the galls of aphids who have been living between sumac and moss for over *48 million* years. How to whittle invasive honeysuckle into a pen. How to find the pinks hidden in avocado stones and buckthorn bark. It’s adventures inside of adventures.

Wild inks are a little more… wild than what you’ll find in the store. A little less vanilla. They’re wilful and ephemeral and full of surprises. And that’s okay. I’m here for the ride. Besides, nothing gold can stay — though that wild grape purple lasts a good long time. 😉

Have a great week folks! 💜

~Kate

Categories
D-I-Why Not flora foraging homeMADE news + announcements wild inklings

Painting with Plants Workshop

Join us Saturday September 30th to Paint with Plants at the Seymour Conservation Area!

🌱🎨: Discover the world of wild inks. Learn about foraging for colour, unlocking the secret pigments of plants and, best of all, make your own “Wild Inkling” art to take home! Together we’ll explore the world of pinks, yellows, greens, browns, blacks, and purples hiding in plain sight.

🌳👍: This workshop is hosted by and in collaboration with Lower Trent Conservation, so in addition to making cool art with plants, your registration supports our local conservation areas. Double win!

(Also I saw turtles basking in the quarry right beside the workshop site, sooo…. triple win!)

🔗: Link to register through Lower Trent Conservation is here. Hope to see you there!
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Covid Notes: The workshop will be held entirely outdoors, based in the picnic shelter. Registration is limited.
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🌈🎥: Interested in making ink but can’t attend? The Colour of Ink featuring Jason S. Logan (Toronto Ink Company) — author of the incomparable ‘Make Ink’ — is now available to watch free online here.

~Kate

Categories
foraging homeMADE homestead wild inklings

Checking the Jelly Snares

I made wild grape jelly for the first time a few years ago. Y’know how when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail? Well once you’ve enjoyed homemade wild grape jelly, everywhere looks like a place to grow wild grapes… Old display stand? You could grape that. Extra bit of fencing? You could grape that.

🍇🌳: We haven’t planted any grapes here. They were here before us and they’ll probably be here after. Wild grapes are all over Ontario. Once you start looking for them you see them everywhere.

🧗‍♀️🍇: But we’ve set up a few places here to encourage wild grape to bear fruit in spots we can actually get to. Grape likes to climb, so sometimes it runs right up to the top of a tree. Where it dangles my jelly dreams out of reach. Look up, way up, and I’ll call Rusty… and tell him we’re out of jelly.

🍇🚧: But grape also likes to move side-to-side along a nice fenceline. So a couple of years ago when we installed a new fence, we also coaxed the grape growing nearby onto its wires. I checked it today to find it is very happy in its new home! Grapes on grapes on grapes. Enough for both us and the wild critters to snack on. Jelly is back on the menu boys!

🍇=🥒✒️🧵: In honesty the jelly is mostly for Neil, but I use wild grape to make a couple of other things here too. The leaves are perfect to pop in fermenting pickles, and I use the berries to make ink, and the vine to make drawing charcoal. In a pinch, I’ve used the vine as twine.

🍇☠️: A word of caution — wild grape is all over Ontario roadsides, but so are pesticides and poisons. Many cities (including ours) spray their roadsides, so be very very picky about where you forage wild foods. Toxic lookalikes like Canadian moonseed also exist. There’s no shame in enjoying a nice homemade strawberry jam on toast if you don’t feel you can forage safely. Strawberry jam is delicious.

Hope you’re having a grape week folks! 💜

~Kate

Categories
D-I-Why Not homeMADE repair

I have a handle on it now

SNAP! The handle broke off in my hand.

I’ve been working on this automata in my spare time for weeks. It’s a bit intricate, and has a quite a few moving parts. (Literally.) I had it all working. I handmade wooden gears fercryingoutloud. And during final assembly, as I got it ready for glue-up, the axle snapped in two.

Am I looking for a reason to stop, or a way to keep going?

I ask myself this sometimes, when I get frustrated. It helps me notice whether my brain is helping or hindering. When I’m building something, repairing something, baking something, making something. When something goes wonky, when it gets tough. When the soup tastes like hot garbage or the light won’t turn on or the part doesn’t fit.

Like the Saturday before last, when I hit one too many tool challenges in a row, and decided to handle it by… crying. It happens. I didn’t want to keep going, I wanted to declare everything everywhere stupid and go sulk. But what I know for sure, even while being a grumpy hothead, is that won’t get me where I want to go. Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Okay. It snapped. What I built once, I can build twice. So I exclaimed a few words that would make a sailor blush, and then switched tasks. All that’s changed is what I’m working on next. Take a moment to grieve, then drill out the old glued-in dowel. Source a new one, get sanding. I can rebuild him. Better, stronger, faster!

As much as I’m working on making this automata, I’m also working on my ability to keep going. Every maker I know has finely honed this skill in themselves. They work on it at least as much as they work on their craft. They work on it by trying again. And again and again. And maybe one more time after that.

All the speedbumps I know how to go over, it’s because of Past Me. Sometimes she gives up, sure. Yes, I’m a hothead, and I can bail with the best of them. But everything I know how to navigate today is credit to her. I’m super grateful for every time she kept going. Even and especially when it suuuuuuucked. I want Future Me to be able to look back on Today Me and say the same thing. I want to make her proud.

Have a great week folks!

Categories
homeMADE tracks & scat

Paw-fect.

I found a pretty perfect coyote paw print in the mud yesterday, and thought I’d have a go at casting it!

2 parts plaster of paris mixed with one part water. I cut the bottom off a plastic ricotta pot to use as a retaining wall for the plaster goop. Carefully poured in the plaster mix, and left it to solidify for 24 hours. I returned this morning to find well preserved wild canid toe beans! I think I’ll mount it by the front door so I can hi-five a coyote whenever I leave the house…

//🦊❓🐺❓🐶❓
FOX, DOG or COYOTE — How can you tell?

Here are 3 tips to help tell whether a single print belongs to a wild canid (fox/coyote) or a domestic dog. (NB There are exceptions to every rule, hence my liberal use of the word “tend”… 😉 )

1 — 🌕🥚 Round vs Oval. Domestic dog prints tend to have a round shape overall, with toes more splayed out. Wild canid toes tend to all point forward, and the overall shape is more oval.

2 — 🗡️🥄Claws. Wild canids tend to have sharper, pointier claws than domestic dogs. They spend less time walking on hard surfaces like pavement and floors.

3 — ✖️🐾 The X Factor. In a wild canid track, because of how the various pads relate to each other, there tends to be an ‘X’ shape through the middle of the print. See if you could draw an X through the print, and not touch any pads.

My ID: I believe this track is the front paw of an eastern coyote. The dimensions are bang on for a coyote’s front paw, ~2.75″x2.5″. Fox would be a little smaller, closer to 2″, even allowing for fuzzy mud measurements, and it lacks the callus ridge I’d expect to see at least a hint of in a clear fox print. Let me know if your eyes see otherwise, and you have a different ID!

I’m really chuffed with how well this first attempt at casting went. You betcha I’ll be trying this again!

Have a great weekend folks! Don’t forget to set aside some time to play in the mud.

~Kate

Categories
D-I-Why Not foraging homeMADE wild inklings

Wild Inklings: 5 years later

This ink sample sheet is now ~5 years old. I made it to test if putting glossy or matte top coats over homemade inks would help preserve their colour (spoiler: nope).

🌳✒️: I made this sampler before I made some of my favourite inks — sumac, oak gall, soot… But it’s proven useful as a tool to see how some inks will age. Some natural inks start out incredibly vibrant, and shift over time to different tones. Buckthorn berries with lye are one — settling from a vibrant green to a mustard yellow. Environment and circumstance play a role too. The wild grape here has settled to more of a rust, while in other paintings I’ve made it’s stayed a bright purple. And that’s fair — I weather a lot faster when left in direct sunlight too.

🎨⌚: It’s a curious reflection and exercise in resilience. The inks will still be there, years later, still present on the page, just not the way they were. Knowing that, though I really enjoy the moments when the colours are vibrant and exciting, I try not to paint around particular hues. (Contrary to Robert Frost, gold is happy to stick around, while nothing green can stay.) So, instead, what’s the crux of a critter? What’s the deeper part that persists, when the superficial stuff goes… squirrelly?

🌱🎉🔄: Making homemade inks also doles out joy over and over. Much more than the intemperate high of a shopping spree. The joy of foraging for the plants, the joy of cooking up their colours, and of exploring their interactions as they run together on the page. Three joys for the price of none. And then the fascination of watching as the created image grows and changes alongside me. It’s not such a bad thing, this evolution and impermanence. Less like a moment lost, more an unfolding adventure.

See the inks in action over on our Wild Inklings page.

Happy March folks!

~Kate

Categories
homeMADE news + announcements

Whittle Trees

A few whittle trees, made by this evening’s fire. 🌲
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Like many small businesses, we’re overdue for a long winter’s nap.

☀️/🌑: It’s the perfect time of year for rebalance. At winter solstice, when you can drink in whichever your heart needs more — the light or the dark.

🔥/❄️: So we’re off to enjoy firepits and snow banks. Fill our eyes with dazzling ice blues, and listen to the bright loud silence of winter.

💤/🎉: We have wonderful projects we’re excited to share with you in 2023. But before then, we’re putting our devices and ourselves in rest mode. Off and offline. Time to recharge.

Wishing you peace, love, merriment, and a beautiful new year.

~Kate and Neil

Categories
news + announcements products

A Mess Up Fess Up

Front of card.
What should be on the back.

✖️ Behind-the-scenes, a misprint, and an apology.
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Above is what the back of this year’s holiday card was supposed to be. Because the printer was unable to get the recycled stock we usually use, and we compromised on FSC-certified stock instead.

✒️🤦‍♀️: However, while writing our own holiday cards last night, I realized that the printer did not use our supplied art. They used a card back from a previous year instead. As a result, the wren card says it is printed on recycled stock, though it is not. It is printed on FSC-certified stock, my bare minimum.

🤢🤮: I am really, really sorry for this error. I am the sort of person who always flips a card over to check these details before buying it. And so I put a lot — like, a *lot* — of effort into making the best choices I can for printing, and representing those choices accurately to you. I’m honestly gutted about this mistake, and I apologize.

🚶‍♀️✉️⏳✉️⏳✉️: When you buy one of our cards, you’re paying for the time it takes to draw it, but also the effort that goes in to making greener choices. Everything we make is an iceberg of active decisions. In addition to the stock selection, we try to use local suppliers whenever possible. And I’ll be honest — it’s a real challenge, and sucks up a lot of time. I’ve only been able to have our cards printed locally on recycled stock by finding the one printer who was willing to special order it in for me. (I’d describe some of my exchanges with other printers as “active scoffing”.)

🗞️🗞️🗞️: This year, I was told I could only have recycled stock if I agreed to buy the whole stack instead of just what I needed, since, and I quote, “it will never get used”. I did, btw, agree to do this, but then was told it was unavailable until at least next year.

In related news, I’m looking for a new printer 😂…

I guess it’s fitting to post this on Humpday, cuz sometimes, it doesn’t go smooth.

So again, I apologize. We’ll keep trying to do our best, and if/when we mess up, we’ll fess up too.

Have a great week folks 💚

~Kate

Categories
birbs homeMADE products

Birb’s Eye View

🐦✏️: This is a little winter wren that is actually not a winter wren but instead is a Carolina wren. Because I got aaaaaallll the way through drawing a winter wren and then read that most winter wrens move out of Ontario for winter. 🤦‍♀️

🍄❄️: (In my defence, I ran into a winter wren in the woods here just a few weeks ago. Though I guess a few weeks ago the woods were also full of oyster mushrooms and not snow.)

🐦🔁🐦: Fortunately I was just a brighter belly and an eye stripe away from a Carolina wren — who *does* overwinter in Ontario. And who is also super adorable, and is also a sometime resident of our woods.

🖨️❔: This artwork is intended to be printed up as this year’s Maker’s Dozen holiday card. Though I’m having trouble finding a local printer with recycled (or FSC at minimum) cardstock. It’s really put a WRENch in my plans. Any recommendations in the Quinte West area welcome! 👍

Hope you’re having a great week folks!❄️🐦🌲

🙌🏳️‍🌈: And thanks to the incomparable @wellpreservedcreative for reminding me to quit playing colour wheel roulette and just look at colour theory when I’m stumped. (*Rogue colour choices remain my own.)

~Kate

Categories
baking baking

Snow Cake – 2022

A family tradition, to mark the first snowfall of the year. A white cake with white icing.

☃️🌨️: It’s a love cake to snow. It’s like if a love letter were edible. It’s a celebration of snow and winter. The cake (or cupcake) doesn’t have to be fancy, though it can be if you like.

🌈❄️: The particular kind of cake and icing isn’t important. It can be decorated with sprinkles or chocolate chips or not at all. Some years I make my snow cake playful, some years experimental, some years nostalgic.

💝❄️: It’s a cake to bake up and savour that feeling you have when you’re a little kid, and you throw open the curtains one morning, see that first blanket of white, and shout: “IT SNOWED!!!”

I still do this. (Just ask Neil 😉) And I plan to keep doing it until the day I die. I hope the snow sticks around here as long as I do.

And if the Snow Cake tradition sounds good to you, if you remember that feeling, that delicious “IT SNOWED!!” feeling — or if you’d like to — you’re welcome to join in, with whatever sweet snowy treat your heart feels like baking up. ❄️🎂

Have a wonderful weekend folks! Happy Snow Cake Day!

~Kate