Forgotten Household Crafts

Hello, friends.


There are a few craft ideas I'm working on now, but since they are still works in progress I will share this book with you today instead: Forgotten Household Crafts, by John Seymour.

Printed in 1987, this book, "...demonstrates in beautiful details and illustrations a range of traditional skills that show you how to produce what you need for yourself...Part manual, part a celebration, this treasury of ageless techniques gives readers step-by-step advice on how to master each craft."

Despite its description, I wouldn't say this book is a how-to manual for anything — more like a coffee table book for the homesteading enthusiast to show off when company comes over. But Seymour does provide fascinating historical accounts of how each craft was used in daily life, and the sketches are amazing. As a writer, it's a useful manual, because it provides descriptions of tools and how they were used that are hard to find online if you don't know what you're looking for. If you already have technical know-how for certain crafts, it also provides some inspiration for projects and organization.

Whenever a passage applies to something I'm working on, I'll probably share an excerpt with you. Once in a while I might also experiment with some of the descriptions Seymour provides concerning common activities such as tea-making, cooking, canning, etc...stuff people think about sometimes but never really bother to try.

I think you'll find it interesting, and I can't wait to get started.

New Blog!

Hi, Readers!

Most of you have been following me for a while now on my official writer's blog, but you may not know that I'm also an avid butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. Okay, so I don't actually make candles yet — and I only plucked chicken feathers once — but I probably will before long at the rate I'm going.

The idea for this blog formed in my mind about a month ago when my mother *ahem* intervened, forced, helped me sort/organize my crafting supplies into tubs. This picture to the right is the result of a solid three days of work, and it's probably less than half the size of what we started with.

My thoughts: "O...M...G! I'm turning into a crazy craft lady!"

The thing I realized (after four weeks of reflection and a whole lot of coffee) is that this isn't the only type of thing I tend to hoard. My mother's kitchen is littered with different baking pans and specialty cookware that I've picked up at various thrift shops over the years — things I've mostly never used. It just sits on my Mom's shelf, gathering dust in the hopes that someday I'll have a kitchen of my own in which to use it.

Not anymore. I've decided I'm going to embrace my inner crazy craft lady and add yet another blog to the endless list of DIY websites available on the internet today.

Welcome to Soil and Strings and Old Fashioned Things! This is where I'm going to let myself share the different projects I get myself into, as well as monologue about the different hobbies I've grown to love. If you like creative stuff, hopefully you'll find this blog inspiring.

Here's to organized chaos and mouth-watering food! Enjoy!