Recycling around the house

I got an idea from magazine photos for replacing our collapsed family coatrack with a bench with a row of hooks above.   I used our former entry bench plus some planks that were waterbed salvage, plus some wood from our former couch, plus some hooks we already had.  After some crappier-than-usual carpentry--I was out of practice--it all came together.  It would almost look nice if I painted it, but paint doesn't hold up at my house.

It ended up being almost a double win, because the following week the laundry drain clogged and water went across the basement floor where all the coats had been piled before.

I used more of the pallet wood from the couch to make new seats for a pair of outdoor cafe chairs.  The seats will need some more Danish oil or something for a finish next spring, especially on the sawn edges.

I also de-upholstered a rocking chair seat.  There turned out to be two layers of fabric tacked over the original upholstery, plus a layer of something in between them that maybe used to be vinyl, but that had turned into slightly crumbly tar.  The springs were in poor condition, and I used more pallet wood to convert the rocker to a hard-bottom seat, with plans to find or make a decent cushion for it. 

I finished a lingering display shelf project.  The frame is from a wooden door screen we picked up for free, the shelves are tongue-and-groove scraps used as bed slats for a bed we were given, and I cut the shelf supports from more of the couch wood.  It came out looking fairly good; the screen frame had been painted in a nice color. 

We've also been dehydrating cabbage, onions, and celery.

A short index to Minnesota Homeschooling Laws

Most of the homeschooling law is in MN Statutes 120A.22, 120A.24, and 120A.26.  The initial report to the superintendent and the letter of intent to continue to provide instruction must contain the required information, but are not required to use the forms provided by the Department of Education or the school district (which often ask for more information than the law requires).  

Often the school district prefers that documentation be sent directly to their homeschool liaison, although the law says to send it to the superintendent.

"Immunization" requirements also apply to homeschoolers, MN Statute 121A.15 and administrative rule  4604 although there is a procedure to declare an exemption by submitting a notarized statement (your bank may offer notary services), and there is otherwise the option of a parent making a written statement about the vaccines the child has received.  The Department of Health has an Immunization Record Form that includes an exemption section, which would still need to be notarized and which incorporates wording that exceeds the parent's legal requirement.  Medical exemptions are also available.

Activities

Dehydrated some cabbages.  Sewed a shower curtain.  Replaced the covers of various chair seats, re-using tacks from earlier armchair.  Put a second bar across a closet to support a laundry basket holding all of the family swimming gear.

Have also been watching the squirrels chew up all of the black walnuts and spit the shells onto the driveway.

The local homeschool association has been putting more effort into the diversity statement on their website than into providing accurate information about homeschooling laws or keeping the membership sign-up page updated.  Doubt that's going to end well.

Mother-in-law has been doing some interesting experiments with natural dyes...avocado pits to produce a rose pink.

Where's the beans??

I don't know when the cheaper brands of baked beans started being canned as a big lump of beans swimming in a sea of liquid, but now I have encountered it twice, once in a store brand, and once in a brand from one of the largest ag companies.

In the latter case, I pulled out a strainer and measured:  just about exactly half of the can's contents by volume were pourable liquid.

I hate washing strainers.

This reminds me of early in the pandemic, when dried pasta suddenly started taking much longer to cook for some reason.

In other activities, I was able to repair watchbands for two children.  I took a toy apart and pulled some dust out of it that was getting in the way of the mechanism.  I altered a swimsuit so that it would fit for another season.

I knit a dishcloth from acrylic yarn rejected by a child, who also went through a substantial fabric stash and burn-tested samples to separate out the ones with synthetic fibers.

I finished one section of crochet for my curtain project.

Several pairs of pants were retired for being too far gone in the seat, and there is at least one more that needs to be retired, now that I think of it.

My husband dehydrated some cabbage.  I learned that you can freeze tomatoes whole.  Children have been growing mint.

My husband also brought home a vintage metal-frame chair similar to three that we already own.  They are very child-resistant, except for the vinyl seats.  My longer-term plan is to redo them in sturdy leather.

A family from church is making big changes to their diet, and they gave us several boxes of food from their pantry that they could no longer eat.  It was good to get a change from our usual and somewhat tedious simple foods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Independence Day

We took some popcorn and lemonade and went to see fireworks last night.

I've been progressing with the old-lady-style crochet, but not so far as to want to practice holding the thread properly.

---------------------.

I took a short barrel-style upholstered chair from the fifties that I patched up a while back, and stripped all of the upholstery off it.  The most recent potty-trainee had frequently used it as a place to quietly go without immediate detection, and I am not in favor of unwashables in the home.

As usual, it was a messy and somewhat hazardous process, but very satisfying in its own way.

The chair turned out to have two sets of springs in the seat and cushion, which explained the chair's other popularity as a trampoline.

The looseness in the frame turned out to be from two bolts, easy to deal with.  Beyond that, the structure is fine except for the beginnings of a crack along the top.

I am thinking of building the bare frame out a bit with wood, doing some shaping and sanding, and then finishing it simply with Danish oil (fast) or linseed oil (slower).  For the seat, I am replacing the springy cushion with a washable pillow, and keeping the bottom springs.  Some amount of new padding and cover will have to go over those.

I saved all of the tacks that I pulled out of the chair while stripping it down, which will be useful for other chair projects, especially since our main staple gun is currently nonfunctional in some non-obvious way.

--------------------

As a research project, I tried mixing acrylic paint with dryer lint, to see what I could do with it.  I found that the lint, mostly cotton, absorbed a lot of the water from the paint, so it dried very quickly and was different to even mix through the lint.  Kneading the two together (wearing rubber gloves) was unpleasantly like handling freshly-vomited cat hairballs, and the dried result is very much like painted hairball.

Sheets and a wreath

My mother-in-law came up with a good set of secondhand sheets from somewhere, which were very welcome here. 

She also brought a box of very nice natural-fiber fabrics and clothing for my eldest child to repurpose.  Child is currently disinterested in any clothing styles less than 200 years old.

Child also went through dozens and dozens of balls of yarn and took samples for burn testing to determine fiber content.  Acrylic and other synthetics melt and drip and curl up while burning, and some of them burn like a cartoon fuse.  

It certainly made me reconsider allowing my family to wear synthetic fibers around open flames.

Cotton, linen, and wool burn much more slowly.  Wool smells like burnt hair.  Cotton sometimes has a small ember still burning at the end when it is blown out.  Linen tends to leave a tiny gray string of ash still hanging

Other children have been busily and ingeniously constructing role-play items from cardboard.

We were given some sweet corn, and my corn huskers left the husks strewn all over outside.  After a couple of days, I separated the leaves and braided them up into a wreath, letting the ends stick out.  The braid was long enough to make two full turns around the wreath; I tied them together with string, and wove a twig through across the top for support.

I still have a little cornhusk wreath that I made last year.  That is now on the back door.

Mending a quilt and a sheet

The quilt I mended by appliqueing leaf shapes over the pulled-out seams.  I sewed around the leaf edges before cutting them out, and then sewed them onto the quilt by hand.

The sheet I mended by a combination of darning and patching.  Darns for the small frayed areas, and patches for the rips, after first closing them with an "antique seam"

The sheet lasted for two whole days before tearing again.  I am not quite ready to purchase a replacement sheet at current retail prices--and accessibility since we are still vehicularly-challenged--so I'm patching it again. 

In the meantime, an old cotton blanket and the large piece of cotton upholstery fabric that I formerly used as a rug are filling in.  It is like camping at home.