Macrame

If I were to rank my skills in fiber arts, I think crochet and sewing are my “best things.” However, macramé has long fascinated me, and I’ve created a few things over the years. In working with the cones, mosses, flowers, sticks and boughs of our timberland, macramé has reintroduced itself, a long-neglected cousin in the fiber art world. 

Macramé is the art of knot-tying and is believed to have originated in the 13^thcentury with Arabian weavers who used it to make decorative fringes on rugs and other woven items. Sailors adopted it, and it was quite popular with the Victorians. More recently it has been associated with the bohemian style of décor which has seen something of an upswing since the “hippie” era of the 60’s and 70’s.

There are two basic knots in macramé, the Half Knot and the Half Hitch. Variations on these two lend themselves to a wide variety of designs. Beads, shells, rocks and other items are often woven into the pattern. 

How do we incorporate macramé into crafts made from forest products?

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

Plant hangers are a good place to start. They are often made simply with a ring at the top and three or four strands of cord knotted in square knots or another variation of basic knot. Beads are often used to enhance the hanger. The cords are gathered together and fastened at the bottom, and the plant container is nestled above the gathered cords. Simple. 

We have been cutting thin slices of alder logs and branches and would add an alder-round platform to the hanger.  

Wall hangings of macramé can be quite stunning. Looping the cords over a dowel or straight stick, then knotting the cords to create a pattern is a simple way of creating a dramatic wall hanging. A finished store-bought stick is fine but foraging for one in nature adds an element of the wild and creates a more rustic bit of décor. A quick look on Etsy indicates the macramé owls of the 70’s are back (or never left). They often have two sticks, top and bottom, with the owl fashioned of knots between. 

Possibilities are endless! How many ways can knotting be used in conjunction with sticks and twigs, cones, plants, and various other forest foraged objects? 

Let your imagination go wild!!

Margaret

Nature Crafts for Kids

Image by betinasuarez from Pixabay 

While the Covid-19 virus and the resulting limitations on work, study and travel is unprecedented, most of us can draw on our previous experience with floods, wildfire, snowstorms, power outages and other random acts of nature. Resist fear and panic; we will get through this…

In the meantime, many of you have children at home unexpectedly. Keeping them learning and occupied in a productive manner is important for the sanity and health of everyone. Crafts, while not the whole answer, can be part of the solution. Finding creative things to make with things already on hand is easier than one might think. For example, while not a “nature” craft as such, here’s my old standby, a homemade play dough recipe:

            1 cup white flour

            ½ cup salt

            2 t cream of tartar

Mix together. Add:

            1 cup water

            2 T oil

            Food coloring of choice

Mix together and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and forms a ball. As soon as it is thick, remove from the stove, take the dough out of the pan and knead it on a sheet of waxed paper until the dough is smooth and the color is uniform. 

Play dough if great, but now is a good time to spend outdoors and in the sun, if possible. Creating things from items found in nature is a good learning opportunity and a chance for children to exercise their creative muscles. Collect leaves to press between the pages of a thick book or preserve them by placing them between sheets of waxed paper and using an iron. Detailed instructions can be found here. 

Collect smooth rocks to bring home and paint. Children can paint the scenes of their choice on flat, smooth stones, but an uplifting project might be to create Kindness Rocks. Write inspiring messages on rocks, then put them back outdoors to be found by others who might need a bit of encouragement. More information.

Pine cones, of course, seem to have an endless number of craft uses. In some locations they are quite easy to find, and if you happen to have some in your backyard you will be able to keep your crafters busy for some time.  

Using felt or paper (or both) to turn pine cones into a variety of animals is one of the cuter ways for children to use cones in crafts. Popular pine cone animals include owls, hedgehogs, turkeys, rabbits, chickens, bats and mice.  

One of my grandsons, who just turned four, has a long history (for one so young) of collecting sticks at every opportunity. His mother, for a time, allowed him to keep a limited collection of special sticks on the patio outside their apartment. The craft-making potential of sticks deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned…

Margaret

Coming soon: Adventures in Basket Weaving

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay 

A basket, because of its soul, must never be put in a dark or out of the way place. It must be free to dance around the world each night and to grow old. -author unknown

We’ve explored our forestland for numerous products that could be used in crafts, including Douglas fir, cedar and pine boughs for fresh holiday wreaths and swags. We’ve experimented with numerous ways to use fir, pine, hemlock, and alder cones in wreaths and wall hangings and even jewelry. Another avenue of interest, yet to be fully developed, is basket making.

I love baskets. My house is full of baskets, all sizes and shapes, but the ones worthy of special note are an antique willow basket my grandmother gave my mother when she first married my dad. The basket was old then, and that’s been over 70 years. I’m guessing it is around 150-170 years old. Mom used it as a clothes basket for many years.

Our antique willow basket

Mom made pine needle baskets as one of the many crafts (sewing, crochet, embroidery, quilting, painting) at which she excelled. The baskets were made of long-leaf pine (Pinus palustris) and raffia and we still keep several in her memory. The long-leaf pine grows in the southeastern United States and has needles as long as 18 inches, the longest in the world.

While the pine needles on our tree farm are not long-leaf, they are traditionally the most important pine needle used in basketry: Ponderosa pine. The fiber used to stitch the needles can be anything from raffia, which is imported, to local cedar bark, nettle, hemp twine or linen thread.

Pine needle baskets by Edith Garner

Bitter cherry, a medium-sized tree, also grows on our property. One grew in the corner of our yard when I was a child, and the Y-shaped trunk was my favorite hiding place. The bark can be split into strips and woven into waterproof baskets. 

We also have willow, which comes in many varieties and has a long tradition of being woven into baskets, such as our antique one.

Cedar is another species that grows on the farm, and the bark was used heavily by Native Americans for baskets, mats, clothing and other items. I read something recently that said blackberry vines could be woven into baskets, not something we would have thought to try.

A recent trip to Maryhill Museum in the Columbia River Gorge revealed the antiquity and creativity of the Native American basket makers. Visit the displays there, if you get a chance. This is such an ancient, time-honored tradition and we are looking forward to learning more.

We have a lot to learn! We will post our adventures as we explore creating baskets from the wild materials on our timberland. 

Margaret

The Use of Red Alder Wood in Crafts

Image by MonikaP from Pixaba

Here grew willows and alders, their trunks twisted like giants’ sinews. Around them bark lichen bloomed blue-white in the darkness. It felt like a good place, where there was old magic. 

-Duncan Harper, “Witch of the Fall”

We were searching for pinecones in the tall grass and brush beneath our twenty-acre stand of Ponderosa pine when we stepped out of the pines into a glade with a small group of elderly red alder, big and tall, in the center. They were covered in lichen and moss, and branches had fallen in a recent windstorm. We took a photo of a strange looking mushroom growing out of a hole in one of the trees. 

The glade we stepped into did seem a bit magical, like the quote from the fantasy book above, although I’m more inclined to C.S. Lewis’s “deep magic” of the Narnia tales, that points back to Christianity rather than paganism. Nature is God’s handiwork, thank you very much. The alder seems like a mystical tree, though, with wood that turns red after being cut. The ancient Celts venerated it, and it was associated with various pagan deities. 

Red alder is common in the Pacific Northwest and our property has alder near every wet spot. Years ago, I recall learning that alder might be marketable for paint brush handles; now it competes with Douglas fir in market price and we sell a bit when we harvest. It is used for the brush handles, still, but also furniture, cabinets, trim, and paneling. 

And get this! Fender has used alder to make their electric guitar bodies since the 1950’s! 

It has other benefits. Traditionally, in the Pacific Northwest, it was used to smoke salmon. The bark, which contains salicon, can be used as a tea to reduce inflammation, or rubbed on the skin to ease the pain of poison oak or insect bites. 

Walking stick by the author

Alder is a member of the birch family and is unusual in a number of ways. Like birch, it is monoecious – that is, it has male and female flowers (calkins) on the same tree. The leaves do not change color in the fall but are shed still green. It adds nitrogen to the ground, and the rotting leaves are a great soil amendment.

Alderwood candleholder

And it is beautiful, both the tree with the distinctive calkins, and the pale, straight-grained wood. We have found a number of craft uses for alder and plan to experiment with more. The young trees or branches make great walking sticks. They dry straight if stored properly and are very strong and light-weight for hiking sticks. The straight grain lends itself well to decorating either by carving, paint or woodburning, and we have done all of that. The bark, in addition to being medicinal, makes a good dye. The alder dye batch we tried, on pure hand-spun wool, was a nice beige color. 

At one point we attempted to make jewelry from the small female alder cones, using electroplating. 

Adler round coasters

Currently we use alder rounds, or “cookies,” in a variety of ways, including crafting candleholders and making coaster sets. We use decoupage on the coasters to either transfer an image, or to just affix one. These are then coated with both decoupage and Verathane for protection. There are plans afoot to use pyrography (woodburning) on the coasters as well. 

And…so much more. The red alder is amazing and versatile and somewhat overlooked in crafts, but I would predict it will gain in popularity in future days. 

In the meantime, it is a nice tree to have in the woods...
Margaret

Biophils Among Us

Just being surrounded by bountiful nature, rejuvenates and inspires us.– E.O. Wilson

Relax, most of us are biophils and always have been. But now we have a word for loving green things and nature: biophilia.

What is biophilia? The dictionary meaning is “love of life.”  Human beings are hard-wired to live in touch with the natural environment, something many of us know intuitively, but in recent times we seem to have lost our way. Being connected with nature and living green things relaxes us, improves our ability to think and be creative, and generally improves health, wellbeing and productivity, but sadly too many of us spend too much time in sterile environments, far removed from the natural world.

Biophilic design, which is an attempt to address this deficit, is having an impact on architecture and is currently the fastest growing trend in interior design. Buildings are being built to meld with the outdoors, to include living plants and natural wood and stone in the interior, to create a more humane environment with the use of building materials, lighting and decoration.

While the innovative work taking place in the business world and public spaces is inspiring and fascinating, how does this apply to, say, your own apartment or house in the suburbs? How can we use nature in our own homes to calm, sooth, inspire and relax us?

terrarium

A few suggestions:

·     Live plants in the house was biophilic before biophilia was a thing. Take it a step further and build a terrarium.

·     Make a statement with wood: an unfinished wood stump as an end table, rough wood picture frames. 

·     Add river rocks, branches, preserved leaves and flowers to your décor.

·     Add moss to a floral centerpiece, terrarium, or as a wall decoration, either live or preserved.

Take something simple and “ordinary” from the outdoors and use it to make a statement: flowers, twigs, rocks.

As a true biophil, you will find even a small amount of natural décor has the power to rejuvenate and restore the human soul.

 What are you doing to restore your soul with nature?

Margaret