A post for Sarah

One of the Yule presents I gave out this year was a small trial set of cloth pads for one of my cousins. I totally forgot to include a set of instructions for them, and I'm sure she has no idea what to do with them. Well, beyond the obvious. :-P So, this post is mostly for my cuz, Sarah, but maybe it'll help others. The first question to answer is, "why cloth pads?" Well, they feel better, they smell better, they're cheaper and more sustainable. Point one, feel better, I make mine out of natural bamboo fabrics, both for smell and feel. They breathe more than disposable plastic/paper pads, which keeps things nicer down there. There's no risk of TDD or any other horrible reaction to the chemicals common in disposable choices. No sticky tape/glue to stick to skin or hair or anything else, just nice soft fabric. Point three, cheaper, if you menstruate for 33 years and you use a couple dozen pads per cycle, you'll throw away close to 10,000 pads. Not only is that expensive for you, but also expensive to the landfill.

The average woman will throw away almost 300 pounds of disposable menstrual products in her lifetime. That is 300 pounds of chemicals, processed wood pulp and petroleum based plastic. Not to mention the resources needed to haul all that stuff to a factory, waste created while the products are being made, packaging materials, and the fuel needed to haul those disposable products to a store - and the fuel and time needed to purchase them and take them home.

Tampons are no better than pads when it comes to the environment. Tampons clog plumbing (plumbers make a lot of money off those "flushed away" tampons). Tampons also contribute heavily to the sewage sludge problem that cities are dealing with all over the industrialized world. Sewage overflows lead to tampons and applicators washing up on beaches, in fact, tampon applicators are one of the most common sources of beach debris! Or look up the trash island in the Pacific, I bet a lot of them end up there too.

Cloth pads require only an extra small load of laundry or two each month and can last 5-7 years or more. That's much more sustainable than disposables. Producing cloth pads also requires less resource investment as there is minimal packaging, much lower fossil fuel cost for transportation, and far fewer chemicals and waste produced in their manufacture. Lower usage of petroleum will make your life easier, ask Aunt Jakie if she remembers the oil crisis of 1973, I know my mom still does. Fast forward 40 years and now we have even less reserves of oil, more industrialized nations wanting oil, and more barrels per day coming from foreign sources. Any supply hiccups at all, and the '73 shock will look like a picnic.

Hmm, I've strayed a little from the subject at hand. Let's just leave with this, even if you don't want to use them as your first line of defense, having some cloth pads around as a backup is never a bad idea. :-)

Care for them is really easy. You'll want a container, large enough to hold an inch or so of water and a couple of pads. Place your used pads in the container of cold water while you are between laundry loads. If you use a tupperware or something, you can keep the lid perched on it loosely, but air tight would be a bad idea. There are ceramic options out there, if you find you like cloth and want to invest in something discreet and functional. (Some ladies use old ceramic cookie jars) The blue bag I put your pads in has a waterproof layer sewn into it, but it can't hold water. Use the bag as storage or as the To Go option. Store used pads in it until you can get home and put them in the container/jar, everything stays neat and clean and contained, and then you can just wash the To Go bag with the load of pads and it's ready to go again. Wash them on hot, and tumble dry if you like. I usually wash mine on warm and air dry them where sunlight can get to them. The sun bleaches them white again. (That's not to say there's a crazy amount of staining, there really isn't.)

There you have it. Enjoy your new cloth pads, let me know if you ever want a different size or different absorbency or different color, I'll happily make you more. Love you!

Learning to knit!

One of my new year resolutions is to learn to knit.
So, yesterday while I was buying yarn to knot my quilt together I bought a ball of yarn to knit into a scarf and a pair of needles. Last night I managed to get 10 stitches cast on and I'd started the next row of knit, but then I dropped a needle and lost the whole thing. :-P
My eventual goal is to get good enough to knit socks. I love love LOVE wool socks, and Dave goes through lots of socks, Rowen will need socks... seems like a real useful skill.

A Handmade Yule

It wasn't really a goal or a formal challenge for myself, but I have managed to put together a handmade Yule.
It feels quite nice to know that none of the presents I'll give out this year were made in China, none were bought at Walmart, and all were made by me.
I made a few different bags, I made some funky fleece hats for the horde of nieces/nephews, some herbs from this summer, and some lounge pants. Nothing terribly hard, thankfully :-) and all went without hiccup. I even had time to make my new family some stockings. :-D
To complete the victory I decided yesterday that I couldn't stand the thought of wrapping all that warm fuzziness in cold eco-not-friendly wrapping paper. So I made gift bags out of cheap holiday fabrics from Jo-Anns. I got a few different fabrics and I made a few different sizes of bags, ending up with 10 bags.Right now they are just closed with elastic in a casing. But, I left the casing open, and I made it larger than needed for elastic. Hopefully next year I can add ribbons or cording to the closing and make them prettier.

And, just to be an overachiever, I got the rest of the diaper covers completed. Yay!
Gift tags and cards still need to be made out of my paper crafting stock. :-)
I'm hoping everything gets done. :-D

Happy Yule,
Blessed be this longest night;
And Goddess Bless with morn's first light.

Did the Federal Gov't just call me fat?

So, brand new changes to the WIC program have rolled out here in Iowa.
For the most part, I really like them. They've replaced some of the juice with 10$ towards fresh veggies and fruit. And we get a loaf of whole wheat bread.
The only part I don't care for is now they require that milk being drunk only by a mom be 1% or skim. So, since my baby is still breastfed and only a little into baby foods, I fall into that category. I HATE 1% and skim. Blegh. And according to my husband, I'm wasting away. :-P So, I guess I wish they would lay off that restriction. But, to get around it, I get a gallon of their free 1% and I get a half gallon of the nice organic whole milk, then I mix them . :-D I know, not ground breaking, but tasty.
It's nice to see the checks fall more in line with WIC's mission. For too long the juices were too much of the check's value, even though all of the WIC merchandise preached fresh fruits and veggies. We did used to get carrots on the WIC checks, due to some (from what I hear) lobbying done by the carrot lobbyists. But I really enjoy the small mountain of fruits/veggies that I bring home now with that 10$ voucher.
This summer I even got checks that worked at the local farmers markets. That was even more awesome! Supporting local farmers with my food assistance dollars. It's nice to see programs like that in place. Government programs done right. Tax dollars being used to help families who need food and the local farmers that grow the food.

Changing of the Guard

A weekend full of sewing has produced a new set of diapers for Rowen. 4 fitted diapers with 6 lay in soaker pads. These will replace the smaller fitted diapers that my mother and I made this spring.

For those of you tuning in who might be interested in such details, here they are. This is the MamaBird pattern, (free off the internet) slightly modified and in a size "Big." I used bamboo velour for the body of the diaper with 3/8" elastic for the legs and back. I used Touch Tape hook and loop for closures, box stitching them on for more strength, and adding laundry tabs. The lay-in soakers are another free pattern found online. I used microfleece for the outer layer and organic hemp terry cloth inside. The microfleece is a wicking cloth, moisture gets pulled down into the terry cloth, leaving a dry feeling for baby's bum. I went with the lay-in soakers because my only complaint about the initial batch of diapers was how long they took to dry. This way the body dries separately from the soakers and everything should dry much quicker.

The first couple of diapers have been tried with much success. Dave did say that he found it hard to deal with the lay-ins while Rowen is squirmy. :-P Of course now with these in rotation I desperately need to finish more medium diaper covers. C'est la vie.
Here's Rowen helping me put away the laundry. He's crawling on two of his wetbags, two of his medium covers are behind him and a stack of momma pads are in front of him. That makes everything in the picture made by me. hahaha

Blizzard!

Well winter weather has blown in with a vengeance this week. We had 6 inches of snow fall last night, so everyone is taking a snow day. Bitterly cold and windy, drifts of up to a couple of feet are expected for the rest of this week. All this means my gardening season is officially over for the year. Below is a picture I snapped in November, the arugula to the left, and the kale on the right.


I harvested the kale patch this weekend, probably a couple pounds of kale. It had been through some pretty hard freezes so I don't think it'll be good to dry, I'm going to have to cook it. Probably either a soup or just as sauteed greens.


That last harvest puts me technically at the 10 month mark for produce production. :-) (My first harvest was spinach in March) That's a personal best for me. We have a lot of produce stored and preserved, either dried or canned. I hope to get an inventory this week so I have a good idea of just how much we have of everything.


Some interesting ideas I stumbled across about window farming in urban areas:


The next time I'm living somewhere with windows, I'm totally going to try this out. I could grow herbs, lettuces, peas and maybe sprouts. Looks fun in any case. :-)

Fall harvests

Well, first week in November, and I wanted to brag on my fall gardening successes.

The bed of greens I planted late summer is really going great. We have a grocery bag full of arugula/spinach/kale and lots more in the garden.

I got a handful of green onions, from a neighbor who had misplanted onion seeds. And a handful of green sage, which is very hardy up here in zone 4.

I harvested the last of the cabbage and made a delicious cole-slaw with a kohlrabi and a carrot. Lastly, I was raking the potato bed, putting things to bed for winter, and I raked out 3 more pounds of potatoes that I had missed during my initial harvest.

Woohoo!