Musings about our lifestyle- Rambling post with gratuitous photos warning

A gratuitous photo of the bush around our humpy

This morning I was searching the internet for a tutorial about making wall lining out of newspaper (I'm on holidays...that's what you do on holidays isn't it?) and the closest I could get was a post or two on 'brown bagging'; which is basically using brown paper as wallpaper over existing wall lining. Being unable to find anything about making actual wall lining, I extended my search to cover building in slum conditions and alternate wall linings, all to no avail. This search started me thinking about my position in the blogging world....

Another gratuitous photo of my dogs watching me spin

I know of many people living as we do here in our humpy; living in knocked together shacks made from scrounged materials and making improvements slowly as low incomes allow. This cannot be a phenomenon indigenous to our area alone, surely there are humpy dwellers all over the world, so why is there so little information about it on the internet? My musings came up with a few possible reasons;

People who live in humpies tend to not be computer literate; While I can't speak for other areas, where we live this tends to be true. People living in the bush are mostly older, perennially low income earners who have never had the opportunity to use computers for recreation and have no desire to do so. This has led to a situation where really clever and useful ideas are not shared among humpy dwellers as we tend to be anti-social beings who don't talk to others or have people over much. It also leads to non-humpy dwellers viewing us as lazy or incompetent, when in fact it requires  huge amount of work, ingenuity and determination to maintain any semblance of social acceptability living in a humpy (showering outdoors at mid winter comes to mind).


People are ashamed to be seen as 'living rough'; While I haven't found this to be the case here (as humpy dwellers are a large minority there is no shame in it), the reactions of a few people visiting my place for the first time has led me to believe that they expect me to be ashamed. I casually mentioned the fact that we still take all our waste water out of the house in buckets at a social event recently and had a lady goggle at me (until that point I had only imagined what a goggle looked like but now I know it is quite a comical facial expression). She avoided me for the rest of the evening (obviously fearing that low standards are communicable). Reactions generally range from outright wonder to shock and pity, but most people come to the enjoy their visits to the madness that is my home. I don't believe I need to be ashamed of my home....yes it's a mess....yes it's open to nature (which is often smelly)...but it's warm and dry and it provides me so much entertainment I rarely want to be  anywhere else.


People want to keep their lifestyle private; This is a very valid reason, people in my area tend to be private (we move here to be hermits) and enjoy being unseen and forgotten in the bush. Being private is perfectly acceptable and should be respected. It is a shame not to share all the amazing things we contrive to make life more comfortable in our humpies, but privacy is a right we need to respect.


It didn't occur to them that others may benefit from the information; This is a common reason, I often see some system or contraption at someone's humpy and rave over how clever the idea is (e.g. using old bathtubs as a reed bed system which produces mulch for an orchard) only to have the inventor say "but..everyone knows how to do that.." or words to that effect. We need to realize that our little niche lifestyle is highly specialized and we have skills not shared by the rest of humanity. People new to the lifestyle could benefit greatly from learning the simple skills we possess (like learning to shop once a month and managing time in town so everything gets done).

A new trellis for passion fruit made from an old industrial window shade

Our combined pavers and cement floor

A gratuitous guinea fowl

Book Book one of our yard chooks

If you are a humpy dweller (or have been a humpy dweller), please feel free to share your wisdom here in the comments section, or on your own blog, or even by talking to the neighbors. We have valuable skills...it's time we started valuing them and sharing them with others.

Natural dye experiments- logwood on cotton and linen

Another natural dye experiment....

I have been looking for a natural purple dye for a while and came across logwood as a possible candidate. There are some problems with using it however; it is not really environmentally friendly as it uses the heartwood of a tree (destroying the tree in the process of gathering dye material is not really friendly) and it is exclusively an American product (so a lot of miles of shipping are racked up in it's cost); it is expensive (see previous problem) and hard to find.

But.....I really love the purples and browns it gives in the dye vat.

Logwood has been used as a dye since the 1600s and has been expensive and valuable since it's discovery. Apparently pirates loved to hijack a shipment of logwood sawdust on it's way from Jamaica to Europe. After using the dye, I can understand why.

Not having access to a pirate ship, I had to resort to buying some online (possibly from pirates). It then sat in my dye box for a month or two waiting for the perfect project.

I had been given some 'teacher clothes' by a friend (thanks Louise), they are all cotton or linen and very high quality clothes...but, they are all either white or pastel colours (I can't wear pale colours, they end up VERY dirty). I decided to try out my newly purchased logwood dye on them.

First step was to mix up the dye;

Logwood dye in it's jar. I mixed it at a rate of 1 teaspoon per litre of water.

Then I mordant-ed all the clothes with Aluminium Acetate and plopped them into the dye bath. I left them there on the wood heater for a few hours and then took the pot off to cool. The results were a set of mottled purple clothes which I love. I think the mottling comes from my not having enough mordant in the mix; some areas attracted the dye more than others because they had more mordant on them.

A cotton shirt.

Cotton and elastane shorts

See

This linen skirt was originally pale blue. Over dyeing has given it a beautiful depth.

The tag from the linen skirt

A lovely linen shirt

See

Of course I won't be able to wear them together (I would look like an over ripe eggplant), but they should add interest to an outfit.

I also had an old cotton hospital sheet (these sheets are virtually indestructible and must have Kevlar somewhere in their makeup; perfect for work) which I mordant-ed and dyed as well. The sheet then became a pair of elastic waisted pants. The dye bath was getting exhausted by the time I got to the sheet so I ended up with mottled beige and purple, to add some interest I mixed up a tiny bit more dye and flicked it onto the wet material with a paint brush (the purple spatter patterns).

They turned out pretty well I think

So now I have a lot of purple mottled clothes. I love the colours I got from this dye bath, but I won't be buying it often because of the aforementioned unsustainability of the dye stuff.
I have concerns about the light fastness of the clothes too, but time and wear will tell. Of course I can always dye them again (or with a different colour) if they fade....I love natural dyes.

Finished my degree- now on with life

Well...not quite. I still have the matter of a ten week intern-ship to complete (trying not to stress too much), but the academic part of the degree is finished. It has been a long four years of study, most of it enjoyable, some of it torturous (maths units spring to mind) but all of it educational.

By the end of 2016 I will be a fully qualified, card carrying Primary School Teacher.


The last four years have been spent largely either working or studying, with little snippets of craft or building squeezed in around them. Now I plan to spend some time....

Building the garden;

Building a new cover over the trailer bed and replanting.

Refurnishing the Hugelkultur beds and planting.

Crafting with fibre;

Making fulled bags

Spinning cotton and wool

Knitting

And more knitting

Dyeing homespun yarn

A lot of homespun yarn

Building my business;

Trying to attract more customers

Adding new products...both hand made and....

Naturally harvested.

Learning new skills

Increasing my stock

Building a house;

Well...maybe I'm dreaming.

Spending time with my animals (and family and friends);

Also...enjoying the finer things in life;

Like unravelling old jumpers by the fire...with wine

And watching sunsets...with wine.

It has been a long, life changing journey so far, I wonder what will happen next?

Hawser ply yarn- An accidental discovery

Sometimes happy accidents happen, and this is one of them.
I am currently completing the last two units of a Bachelor of Education (primary), these last two units are hard and require a lot of brain space. I usually spin, weave or knit in the evenings (after a long day at the computer) to relax and do something productive. So last week I decided to try a new plying method for making fingering weight yarn (plying is when you twist two strands together to make a stronger and thicker yarn). The usual method is to spin singles in a clockwise direction and then ply two together in an anticlockwise direction. My new method involved winding the singles into a centre pull ball and plying in the usual anticlockwise direction from both ends of it to make a two ply yarn.
This time I was distracted by thinking about my current assignment (teaching fractions) and plied the whole 100 g of singles in a clockwise direction (without even noticing; yes I was that distracted). The result was a really twisty yarn that could not be used for anything and looked sort of wrong. So I went looking for advice on the internet (as I always do) and found that other people have made the same mistake (unsurprising really) and decided they liked it better that way. This plying method is called Hawser ply and it is used to make super stretchy yarn for knitting cuffs on sleeves, socks and hats. The catch was that I had to make another 100 g of clockwise plyed yarn then ply them both together in a clockwise direction.

The first skein of twisty yarn.

 I found some great tips and pointers in a The Spinners Book of Yarn Designs; keep the yarn tight while it is plied and give it a good hot wash when it's done.

Two balls of mistake yarn ready to ply up. You can see how twisty it is.

After I made my mistake yarn again (on purpose this time) I plied them together in the recommended anti-clockwise direction and got a very stretchy DK weight yarn. I can't wait to knit something up with it now to see if it does make better cuffs.

Hawser yarn on the swift

The finished Hawser plyed yarn

I ended up with 200 g of  Hawser ply yarn

It's exciting to make mistakes and discover new things isn't it. I think I will make more of this type of yarn in the future, just because I can. It has also got me interested in exploring different plying methods (there are so many) and getting a bit more variability into my yarns.

Oh and I did eventually get to making some fingering weight yarn.

My second attempt at fingering weight yarn; merino this time.

A kitchen floor - or The brown snake story

Several months ago now I had an exciting adventure with a HUGE Eastern brown snake. Anyone who knows me, or reads my blog knows that I am very tolerant of all manner of creatures who share my space. However this encounter scared the pants off me. The entire story goes like this;

I was studying away at my desk when I decided I needed to stretch my legs a little. I took a clothes basket with me out the door to do some useful housework while I enjoyed the yard. Sitting in the sun enjoying a peaceful moment was the biggest Eastern brown snake I have ever seen, she saw me an promptly shot off into the chook pen. As they don't commonly eat chooks I wasn't too worried about them, but it did suddenly occur to me that there are gaps all around the base of our walls. I dropped the clothes basket and hurried inside to rectify this problem.

I stuffed towels into cracks and sheets into holes all around the walls and went back to studying (not too effectively) jumping up to peer out widows every time a chook squawked. I had the dogs in the house with me as even though they do not commonly chase snakes I was not taking chances with this girl. My daughter had spotted this snake around the house a month previously and even managed to get a few shots of her, but until I was face to face with her I didn't really understand how BIG she was.

This is her front half...this doesn't actually give you the full picture of how BIG she is.

About 2.00 pm I got up to make myself a coffee and noticed the snake playing under the bathtub (yes, I had forgotten that our bathroom wall behind the bath is only a tarp) and immediately put the dogs on leads tied to the bed to keep them away from her. At that point a really loud and low plane went over our house and either the vibrations or the surprised squeal from me frightened her out into the kitchen area. I of course retreated to the bed holding the dogs on short leads so they couldn't get off the bed. 

SHE (yes, she deserves the capitalisation) cruised around the humpy looking for a way out (which I had inconveniently blocked) and seemed not to remember where the bathroom was. I watched her as best I could while frantically dialling numbers on my phone (which was conveniently beside the bed). My mother and father's phone was not answering (and later proved to be out), my partner was at work and had his phone turned off, my neighbours were all either out or not answering, so I resorted to ringing the WIRES hotline. After explaining to the woman who answered, where I live; in a tin shed in the Northern NSW bush, how the snake got in; there are a lot of holes and what that awful noise was; Barry alerting me and the person on the other end of the phone to a snake in the vicinity, she informed me that my closest snake carer was in Tweed Heads and probably would not make it. 

Barry, the snake alarm; checking his look in the mirror

After hanging up from that very unsatisfying call I rang my partner again (and had lost sight of the snake completely) he was on lunch and answered the phone. I explained the situation to him (stuck on the bed with the dogs, big snake in the house) and he said (and I quote..) "I will just finish mowing this block and come home". So I hung up the phone and settled down to wait, I cruised Facebook and posted an update about my situation, I joined Pinterest and put up some boards, I talked to the dogs, I bargained with the by now invisible snake and I planned the snake-proofing of my humpy. I rang our local Rural Agents and ordered snake repellents and cement, they were very helpful and slightly amused at my predicament. I made repeated attempts to call my partner and see how much longer he would be, but he had turned his phone off.

When my about-to-be-in-a-lot-of-trouble partner walked in the door it was 6.30 pm the dogs and I were desperate to go to the toilet. I put the dogs in the car (after we had all had a supervised wee) and we searched the humpy from top to bottom (mostly bottom, brown snakes don't climb much) until 1.30 am. We didn't find her, so we bought the dogs in, tied them to the bed and went to sleep amid chaos.

The next day we both had the day off work and removed the entire bathroom, down to the dirt, so we could put in a floor and a wall to keep the snakes out (at least the ground based ones). We still hadn't spotted the snake and assumed she must have left during the siege the day before.

Where the bathroom used to be and a very confused Spot (the old dog)

We dug out and sort of levelled (by eye) the floor, began laying pavers for the new floor, put a new section of raised floor on the adjacent lounge room floor and cleared the area to put in the wall panel. When we stopped for lunch and sat down in the lounge room, we spotted the snake sneaking out from under the lounge room floor and heading out the gap (obviously relieved to have escaped from the mad house) she slithered off down the yard and into the gully, while we resumed putting up the wall with renewed vigour and no lunch.

The beginnings of the new kitchen floor.

We eventually called up some younger backs to give us a hand as we were getting very tired by that time (thanks Jesse and Meeka). In three days we got the wall frame in (prefab aluminium) and cladded with corrugated iron (buried at the base to stop snakes), paved and cemented the kitchen floor (quick set cement in the gaps we had no pavers for) and a new section of tire supported floor. We also went around and blocked off a lot of holes in the lower wall.

The new section of lounge room floor, yes she came out from under there.

Kev and Jesse beginning to cement the floor

The floor almost done

I love quick set cement

The floor almost done (and Meeka having a break)

The new floor, sink moved and most importantly the wall clad.

A more agreeable visitor in the pumpkins; a carpet python.

Now back to study.

What an exciting way to get a new kitchen. We are back to bathing with a bucket outside for a while until the new laundry/bath house is built, but the encroaching winter chill will make that happen I'm sure. It's amazing what we can afford and find time to do in the face of a crisis isn't it?