NEW! Felted Soap Kits

For any of you who love wool, soap, or wool & soap!  We absolutely  love the texture and feeling of working with pure natural wool roving...and now we are excited to offer our new felted soap kits through the Homestead Herbals etsy store.  These are made with our own natural handcrafted soaps and pure hand-dyed merino wool roving!  These kits make 4 good sized bars, and come with 8 colours of wool roving plus white wool as a base colour, all instructions and supplies you need to make your felted soap at home.  All you need is warm water, a bowl and a dash of liquid dish soap and you are set. 

We'll also be offering a felted soap workshop on April 26 here at Little City Farm, but for those who already know how to felt or want to continue to make their own at home we now have kits ready to go with all the supplies you need.  Felting is such a great activity to do with kids, especially on chilly days when dipping our hands into warm soapy water is so satisfying.  Today's weather (a surprisingly snowy and blowy mid-March day!) is just such a day.

Felted soap love!

We are spending a lot of time making felted soap these days.  It's been such a great activity to do with kids!  Our nearly 6 year old absolutely loves felting with wool and often comes up with beautiful designs that I would not have thought of.  Needle felting, wet felting, carding wool, finger knitting, even trying to learn the drop-spindle (we have not got the hang of that yet!), she could spend hours doing anything tactile that's related to wool really.  These are all simple projects that are manageable, don't need to cost much in supplies or time, and are easy enough for kids to enjoy. 

Making wet felted soap is especially nice on cold days when we need to warm our hands up and feel a little bit extra cozy.  Warming them in hot soapy water, choosing gorgeous natural wool and sorting colours, creating patterns that always end up looking like a lovely unexpected surprise when we finish.  It brings such a relaxed mood of thoughtful concentration into our kitchen that I could do this every day.  Here are some of our latest creations - if you want to learn please consider joining us for our upcoming Felted Soap Workshop on April 26. 

Dying and felting woolen toys

I think felting wool could become an addictive craft.  Wool is such a wonderful fibre to work with, and felting it is incredibly relaxing, simple (very young kids can participate easily), and makes beautiful soft toys.  Yesterday our little one and I made felted woolen balls, of all shapes and sizes.

First we cleaned the wool, tried our hand at carding...a little...and then dyed the wool.  For dying here is what you need:

To dye with berries, use 1/2 cup salt to 8 cups water, to "set" the fabric.  To dye with plant materials, use 2 cups vinegar to 8 cups water to "set" the fabric.  Boil your fabric or wool which you plan to dye for about 1 hour in the water to set.  This will help the dye colour to hold fast.

For dying, we used black currants from the freezer for our berry dye - it made a greyish-blue colour; and turmeric for our plant dye - it made a dusky sunflower yellow colour.  Both colours were quite satisfying.  We heated the wool in the dye bath and let it steep for about an hour again.

Rinse the fabric/wool in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear.

To felt, prepare a large bowl with hot soapy water (use several Tbsp dish detergent as soap).  Then take small pieces of wool, wet them and roll in palms of hands working them into tight balls.  Keep adding small thin layers of wool ontop of the ball, constantly wetting and adding more hot water as needed. Shape into balls of all sizes, or acorns (see below), bracelets, dolls, blocks, other shapes...

This is a labour intensive process, but very relaxing and social - and wet.  Wear old clothes and have a towel or two on hand to soak up any drips and spills!  A great winter activity to do with kids!

January homesteading projects

What have we been upto this month?  Well, not much time has been spent on the computer since we got our 2011 workshop series posted!  Phew!  The workshops are filling up and this season is starting to look like it will full steam ahead once again.  However, winter is also our slower time to reflect on what we accomplished in the past year, learn from our mistakes, dream about new projects, read a few books, map out the garden, go through our seed catalogues and saved seed packages, sit by the fire, do a little mending, tending to the hens (they need fresh water constantly, lots of snacks, and we let them sneak into the back door of the house to warm up every once in a while on the coldest days!).  Oh, and the good news is all the hens have gotten through the fall-winter molting, have grown beautiful new plumage and are back to laying eggs - surprisingly, even in this cold weather!

Of course, with our active 2 1/2 year old, there are also lots of winter activities like evening board games, tobogganning, building in the snow, bundled up walks in the park.  She's also at the age of constantly wanting to help with new projects, like this week: our regular weekly batch of yogurt (which is incredibly easy using our new source of raw milk!), another attempt at making cheese (this time a successful mozzarella and cream cheese!), and carding, dying and felting wool (we have a new assortment of wool balls rolling around the wooden floors of this house).

spOtlight Festival - Funding Received!

We just received word that we've gotten funding we applied for, toward an all-day event featuring traditional crafting techniques here at Little City Farm! Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for supporting our idea, and allowing us to be a part of the province-wide "spOtlight Festival", a weekend open studio tour showcasing local artists and crafters. We are so pleased to be a part of this here in Kitchener!

Our series is called "Plants, Roots & Fibres: Natural Fibre Arts and Herbal Crafts". We will be focussing on using plants, natural fibres and recycled materials in all the workshops throughout the day. The FREE event is Sat, June 6 from 10 am-5 pm, with hour-long workshops running all day. More details coming but here is the basic schedule for the day. We encourage pre-registration as there will be some limited space for workshops held indoors (some workshops will be outside).

10 am - Natural Dyes
11 am - Spinning, Carding and Natural Fibres
12 noon - Break (we encourage people to bring a picnic lunch to eat here if they wish to stay)
1 pm - Wet Felting
2 pm - Herbal Oils and Salves
3 pm - Natural Cold-Process Soapmaking
4 pm - Papermaking

We'll have a variety of artists/crafters here to lead these workshops, with some hands-on components for participants. It's going to be a full and exciting day - come check it out!