Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #2

(Above:These pears got turned into a pear/ginger/feijoa chutney. On the right are nettles drying. Autumn has been so warm…my nettle patch just keeps going and going.)

When I posted the first ‘Slow-small Media for Weekend’ last week, I asked F if he got the wordplay in the title…? and he said, no, he didn’t–I can always count on him to be honest. I meant it as a play on ‘social media’…but the fact I’ve had to explain it means it doesn’t really scan, I guess. Never mind…I’m sticking with it.  

A useful resource for reducing food waste in your kitchen

F and I run a very low-waste, frugal (and yet abundant and colourful) kitchen. I feel I am pretty savvy about not wasting food however I learned things (or had my inspiration refreshed) from this great video by Immy Lucas. where she offers 100 ways to reduce food waste. 

She has a practical and grounded approach that I really like. 

& I appreciated that she included reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer as one of the 100 things; a book that has opened many hearts and minds to being more grateful and reciprocal towards the earth. 

An affordable artwork 

I think everyone should be able to have beautiful art work on their walls and yet so much art is beyond the budget of many …so when I see beautiful art works available for purchase for under $50 New Zealand I will share them with you. Here’s one for this week:

This graceful fern teatowel from New Zealand maker I feel Natty would make a lovely piece of affordable art, pinned up on a wall, I reckon. It has a calm-inducing quality about it.

A (secular) prayer

I immediately loved this earthy version of an ‘our lady’ by Sylvia Linsteadt and loved her invitation to add your own as things occur to you…to keep growing it as an ongoing appreciation of the earth. 

& Here’s an addition to it from me: 

Our lady of the slow autumn morning, the crackling fire, the bubbling porridge

Our lady full of microscopic life, bringing the bubbles to our ferments

Our lady of a friend’s handwriting on a homemade seed packet

Our lady of the finch who sits in the open window, looks inside a moment then flits away

(Above: the sweetest thing about garden/kitchen gifts from friends is their handwriting on the labels.)

A song

I’m new to this artist, Sun Kil Moon. Some of his songs sound like lost songs from Neil Young’s Harvest record. The music has a soft, dreamy, lugubrious style that is perfect for autumn/winter listening. 

Another thing I really like about his work is that he often writes with careful specificity about geographical places, rivers, forests, cities. I guess because I’m a writer, I study and the appreciate lyrics as much as sounds of music. I’m particularly obsessed with this song ‘Carry me, Ohio’. 

A commenter beneath the song remarked ‘This is the most depressing uplifting song in existence’ which made me laugh and is accurate. This song seems to be very gloomy, and yet it does something upwards to my heart. 

There’s an apology in the lyrics, verses begin ‘sorry that…’. Is he apologising to a specific person? To a place? To his past self? It’s unclear…and that’s what makes the song so intriguing and beautiful. His music has a hypnotic quality, gloomy lullabies.

An introduction to Eco-Dyeing

I dabble in eco-dyeing. I’d like to get much better at it. Sometimes when I start something new I can be quite mean to myself about how janky my early attempts are.

I have eco-dyed some papers for making cards and for using in my journal. I’ve eco-dyed some of my clothing, too. I didn’t get the lovely, clear leaf prints more experienced people do but still I was excited by the patterns the eucaplytus made on my linen tunic.

Founder of eco-dyeing and one of my art-heroes, India Flint, writes evocatively about how eco-dyed fabrics take on on the scents of the plant materials and (if you do your dyeing over an outdoor fire, as I do) also woodsmoke. This is true! My eco-dyed tunic, despite many launders, still smells like eucalyptus and woodsmoke…both scents I love.

If you’re new to eco-dying, here’s a simple introduction .

& India Flint’s books are wonderful and inspirational. They can be hard to find but most libraries have them.

I’ve decided to start a creative process journal for my eco-dyeing. I will share a bit of that along the way.

A new Youtube channel

I seem to watch more Youtube than any other subscription service these days. I have an endless appetite for watching people who have filmed themselves doing interesting things and sharing their quiet, fascinating lives. This year I’ve been paying for Youtube Premium and if you watch a lot of Youtube, I can’t stress enough how much it improves the experience to not have to deal with the ads. 

I happened on Black Girl in the Woods somehow (thank you, algorithm) when she was just a couple of videos in. Now her channel is growing fast! 

She has bought a small piece of land in the USA (mortgage-free) with a pond and some trees. Her videos are honest, gentle reflections on why she did that, her vision for her life and her little plot and some footage of projects on the go. I admire her courage and I appreciate her world-view. 

A recipe (or two) 

I’m in the middle of making this fermented hot sauce. It is fizzing away in my fermentation station and by the end of this week, I will bottle it. 

Do you sometimes get in a rut with salad dressings? I do. Recently, I decided I want to use miso paste more in dressings because we’ve done that thing we’re we’ve triple-bought miso paste and now have too much. So I’ve been trying different miso-based dressings and I’ve been really enjoying the combination of miso with lime and ginger…these three ingredients really sing and zing together. 

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I hope you’re enjoying these digests–let me know in the comments. 

This weekend I am very excited to be going to see Marlon Williams. 

& There’s a stamp and postcard convention happening in town. I’m not a stamp collector but I do have a passion for old postcards, particularly Victorian ones…so I will be going along to be that annoying person who flips slowly through boxes of postcards before musing over a large selection and then paring it down to a treasured handful to buy. 

I am slow-hand-stitching a scarf with scraps of fabric my friend cyanotype-printed for me (I will show it to you when it’s finished) so I’m hoping there will be some time to sit down and work on that for a while. 

Have a lovely weekend, beauties!