Woah! Five years since writing on GrittyFlowersPrettyDirt. 

We sold our house moved into a Sprinter van, traveled 27,000 miles for fourteen months, looked for land in the Pacific North West and then landed in Spanish Fork Utah where we currently live on a three acre terraced hill. O'lover and I both teach at a Waldorf Charter School where Ezra attends Fourth grade. Oliver teaches gardening and I teach handwork both online and in person. I've been documenting our lives over on instagram @hum_house 

beating the heat with matching white outfits

Ezra wearing his papier mache viking helmet in my classroom

filming handwork lessons for first through sixth grades

A Look Around

Since my last post in April my personal world has been reshaping itself at a gallop. That's a nod to things which need general acknowledgment. (dear friends, sorry to be so cryptic! that's all that can be said here. but you know...)

Here's a whirlwind look around!
Ezra just started the afternoon kindy at the neighborhood school. And I started working again.

I recently fell in love with this poetic beautiful soul; it was unrequited. And my heart is broke. =(

The garden has been left to its own wild devices. We just watch.

Sidge pretending the danish cabbage is her wedding bouquet. We then made sauerkraut.

Just as I slaughtered the last of 2014's pumpkins...

...Sidge picked the first of this year's pumpkins. 

The ladies

Ezra and neighborhood friends hanging out on the front porch.

 Made a magic bag for a friend who needed...magic.

And fiber arts days!!! We have a core group of about five adults and four kids roaming the countryside looking for natural dye plants and then experimenting back at the cottage. 

Harvesting dock root for dyeing.

 Chloe is teaching us how to make moccasins from local elk leather.

 

Set up the community loom outside.

My swatch is so warped...hahaha- the language of textile arts, kinda love how those words and sayings infiltrate our contemporary language. Every time I hear someone say "darn it" i think of how sunk i feel about holes in my handknit socks. hahaha.

 I love Angell's open weave

 Ezra gently submerging wool into a plant dye bath.

 Tyler is flipping us off as he puts the skins of perennial onions in the dye pot.

 beautiful #fibershed homegrown onion skins.

 Ezra loves helping make batts with the drum carder. This wool was dyed with tansy flowers.

 Beautiful people helping mordant 14 pounds of Suffolk wool. And confession, after asking around for advice and reading online the answers about mordanting in this galvanized steel trough are mixed- shooting from the hip and experimenting over here. 

 Letting our mordanted wool dry at the gypsy caravan- which is our #utahhighdesertfibershed headquarters. =)

 Tyler teaching Ella how to spin.

Local slate canyon harvesting rabbit brush for dyeing.

 Sunflower and rabbitbrush dye baths.

 Dyer's Woad! Gathered 11 pounds of it!

 Just hanging out in the garden

And still doing homeschool with these cool boys (when Ez isn't at the neighborhood school) 

handwork, foraging, cooking

 spending as much time as possible touching crags.

prepping to cast seeds for fall crops in the front jungle

Love and besos,
Quel

Home Again...

...and trying to remember if I knit a single thing this last year.

Thankfully the camera remembers that I did tote knitting around.

Central Park

Grand Central Station

NYC subway

finished the socks I knit in NYC to give to my sister for her birthday.

Knit this hat for Oliver for his winter bike commute; below I am trying it on mid-process. It's a Red Cross WWI pattern and because it is made from local Jacob's Sheep wool it qualifies as a Utah High Desert Fibershed project.

 finished this handspun vest for Ez.

 and knit matching latte coats for Ezra and his adorable cousin (below).

 Since the below photos I have undone the cuffs and knit the sleeves four inches longer.

harvesting kale

 Sidge is modeling the garden scarf. Which is another Utah High Desert Fibershed project. All local wool, all dyed from plants in my garden. And it was the first time I made up a pattern.

Sidge and Ezra are wearing mittens I knit them. And notice Ezra now rides his bike with pedals!!!

a Momma made outfit.

 This vest is the second pattern I've made up; I'm gaining confidence people.  My mom never knits from patterns; I have always knit from patterns...until this last winter.

Besos!