Sidetracked Charley

The hardest part of going green with my new clothesline was the clothespin. Seems there is not a single product, even the lowly clothespin, that China cannot make worse. So what I thought was going to be a simple local store purchase because an extensive hunt. I want clothespins like Momma used to have. You know the ones that your little fingers could barely squeeze open and when applied to the skin of your sibling caused pain. I wanted them to hold the clothes on the line in valley winds. Seemed simple but NOT. Finally found some largish plastic ones at Wal-Mart that are labeled heavy duty. They will do for the moment, but I am still in search of the ultimate clothespin. So yesterday with the expected snow storm delayed and the new clothespins in hand I emptied my travel bag and did my laundry. My sister and I had been "mudding" in her Jeep and I had all those clothes to wash. So what might have been a three dryer load day wasn't. My clothesline and the clothespins held ...

The current economic crisis has me doing a lot of things I thought I had given up from my hippie days or my youth where I wanted to learn all the old crafts like spinning wool and tanning hides. I did a lot of spinning. But tanning hides required killing an animal first. I did canning, freezing, baking bread, making my own biscotti, raising geese, and angora goats (for the raw materials to do that spinning I had learned in the Blue Ridge Mountains.) I even died the wool I spun with natural dyes created from native plants. And I had many a clothesline. I was convinced that clothes smelled better when line dried. Haven't had one for a good dozen years. Winters here seem to freeze dry them. And if the wind is too high you risk losing those good sheets to the neighbors. Still why not put up a clothes line in the backyard to use for those days when the weather is pleasant? Every time I hung out jeans or comforters it would save on the electricity to run the dryer. Sounds really green an...