Welcome to the Six Kingdoms Yarn Club-- The Follow up to The Seven Deadly S(p)ins Club! Starting May, 2009

The Six Kingdoms Yarn Club is a collaborative yarn club organized by The Unique Sheep and our retail partners. Our Seven Deadly S(p)ins Club was so much fun that we decided to do another themed club, but this time we are basing it on the Six Kingdoms of Life.  

This isn't your average sock club. Where else will you find

• 6 Exceptional Projects- Here is your chance to explore some of the techniques that you may have not done before, like textural knitting, lacework, beading, or even felting!
  
  
  
• 6 Luscious Yarn Bases-- 4 of the 6 projects will include at least 150 grams of yarn and a couple of projects will include even more than that. *
  
  
•  6 Hand Painted color ways created by Kelly and Laura of The Unique Sheep in collaboration with...
  
  
• 6 Talented Designers—you will see some familiar faces and a couple of new ones. 

• Fun contests and prizes scattered along the way
  
  
• And of course some fun extras fitting the theme! If you were a member of the Seven Deadly S(p)ins Club you know we really enjoy putting together the "extras"!

Vermicomposting

While you are working on your Boletus and waiting for the next project (the yarn for which is hanging in my studio drying right now), I thought I'd share a little bit about vermicomposting. Vermicomposting is using worms to break down organic matter like fruits, veggies and paper scraps. Because vermicomposting is becoming more and more popular, you can find all sorts of bins available for purchase. They come in different sizes (the larger ones being able to handle larger amounts of material, of course) and styles. Mine is very basic and quite small because when I first got it I was living in an apartment and had very little space. I actually kept it in the cabinet under my kitchen sink! My bin is homemade and there are plenty of instructions available on the web if you want to make you own, or a variety of options to purchase in a range of prices.

How its Done

Once you have your bin, the next critical ingredient are the worms, of course! All earthworms are good composters and improve the soil. But for a vermicompost bin you need a specific type of worm. I've heard that a couple different species can be used, but I was instructed that Red Wigglers would be best and so thats what I have. They are different from the earthworms you find in your garden. They are surface dwellers and very efficient at eating organic materials, making them perfect for your bin. I've heard that if you use earthworms from the garden not only are they less efficient but they try to escape! The only drawback about the Red Wigglers is that they are a bit more sensitive to temperature and so you can't leave your bin outside in the winter-- as it gets cold they will slow down and eventually freeze to death. The Red Wigglers are most efficient between 59-77 degrees fahrenheit, in other words at room temperature. The worms don't like light, so its hard to get a good picture of them-- as soon as I open the lid they dig down into the soil.

I started my bin with a bit of organic potting soil (make sure to use the type that doesn't have any additives) and some torn up paper waste. You don't need much at first because as you add organic matter and the worms break it down you will find that your bin contains more and more of a rich, dark soil.

The worms will be happy eating just about anything, but to keep your binfrom stinking its important to only add "approved" waste and to not put in too much at one time. Approved waste includes any and all vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds and tea leaves (including the filters or bags), eggs (including the shells), stale bread, grass clippings/weeds, paper scraps including shredded newspaper and table scraps that don't include dairy or meat. If you add any dairy or meat it will spoil and smell bad and attract unwanted pests. I find that we will sometimes have a LOT of scraps and then other times not have much at all. So when we do have a lot I will freeze some of it for later. The worms break the waste down faster if it is chopped up into small pieces or even pureed. I have a magic bullet food processor so I just put my food scrapes and some water in, blend it up and then have worm puree. This can be poured into the bin or frozen in icecube trays for later. If you add large chunks of food (like a partial head of lettuce thats started to go bad) it will take the worms a long time to eat it and so it will start to rot and attract fruit flies. When adding waste to the bin, its important to cover the new addition with soil. This helps control odor and prevent fruit flies from moving in.

Benefits of Vermicompost

The first benefit you receive is having an eco-friendly way to get rid of your organic waste. Most landfills (with the exception of newer "bioreactor" landfills) are designed to prevent decomposition. This protects the environment from the breakdown of unwanted substances, but it means that any organic waste that we put in the trash can stays in the landfill as partially rotten food- never breaking down into soil and re-entering the environment. And since we are running out of space for landfills, and no one wants a landfill in their backyard, it makes sense to try to keep as much out of them as possible. Having a regular compost bin in your backyard would serve the same purpose, of course, but isn't an option for many people who live in an apartment, don't have a yard, or don't want the physical chore of "turning" or mixing a compost pile.

Once your bin is established, you'll have two other benefits-- worm castings and worm tea. The rich soil that the worms create from your waste (ehem, worm poo) is GREAT for your garden or potted plants. Use it on its own or mix it in with the existing soil. This organic fertilizer looks like soil but its so much richer than the average soil you'll find in your backyard.

Worm tea can be created by mixing some of the worm castings with water or by diluting the liquid/sludge that drains into the bottom of bin. We use this as a liquid fertilizer in our garden. You want to make sure its diluted, though, as it can be toxic to your plants if its too strong.

I hope you enjoyed reading a bit about one of my attempts to lesson my impact on the environment and live a more sustainable life!

Knit Picky loves Boletus!

Here's Tiffany, Jo and Shanna, showing off the yummy stuff!

Who will finish first? Stay tuned!

The Randomly Selected Contest #1 winner...

is Debbie who left this comment:

Hi,
In order to minimize our footprint we have joined a local farmers market to eat locally. We also grow some of our own vegetables and herbs. We recycle paper, cans, and plastic. We use compact fluorescent light bulbs.
We carpool to work and take public transportation whenever possible.

Debbie-- we need to know your contact info so you can receive a prize, so please e-mail kelly@theuniquesheep.com!

Congrats and thanks to all who entered!

A Green Dinner Party

Last night my husband and I had a few friends over for a dinner party and I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some of the things that we do to live in a sustainable manner. Every Tuesday we pick up a box from a neighbors back porch filled with fresh veggies. It is weekly our CSA share. "CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture and the idea is that members of the community support local farmers by signing up and pre-paying to receive a share of the harvest. In this way, farmers have the capital they need at the beginning of the season rather than having to wait until after the crops are grown. And the members get very fresh, very local produce. Sometimes CSAs are organized by groups of small farms, but the one we belong to is just one farm but with lots of different crops. We never know exactly what we will get from week to week. This summer I'll be posting from time to time with photos of our weekly 'haul' and some of the meals and recipes we've created with them. Well, I shouldn't really say "we" since my husband does most of the cooking!

But that's enough about CSAs for now. This week we received broccoli, lettuce, strawberries, pac choi and kale. We saved one container of strawberries, the broccoli and some of the pac choi for the dinner party.

Then on Saturday morning we went to the farmers market to pick up some other ingredients. Unfortunately we accidentally slept in later than we planned and only had time to stop by one of the three farmers markets in town, but we were able to pick up a few things. A few blocks away we stopped for a new bag of freshly roasted coffee beans from Cup-A-Joe. Most of their beans are fair trade and/or organic and/or shade grown. We usually keep a few bags of beans on hand but were running low and didn't want to run out of coffee in case anyone needed some for the drive home after dinner!

While my husband headed to the local co-op grocery store to pick up the rest of the ingredients, I started to work on the bread we would use for the appetizers. I recently discovered a book called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes and suddenly even I can make bread. Their instructions really make it easy to make good bread without a lot of fuss. I've just made a couple of loaves so far, but am looking forward to trying out some of the more interesting recipes soon. Stay tuned for more on that. I consider making my own bread to be a "green" activity because it saves on fuel for transportation (both of the bread to the store and me to the store and back) and packaging. I'm also making an effort to snack on things like homemade bread rather than packaged snack foods that use ingredients from far away (i.e. lots of fuel for transportation) and wasteful packaging. Thankfully I made two loaves because one of them ended up very oddly shaped and when I tried to slice it the slices weren't very pretty. I saved them to snack on when we weren't trying to impress guests! The nicer slices eventually got spread with chevre (goat cheese) made by a local woman who makes cheese in her home using local ingredients. And its some of the best chevre I've ever tasted. When we bought it at the farmers market we made sure to buy two rounds- one plain one for the dinner and one mixed with herbs for ourselves! On top of the chevre I piled on slices of some of those strawberries from the CSA box, fine slivers of basil from our garden and a balsalmic vinegarette that my husband mixed up. I couldn't believe how yummy they turned out, and pretty too! We'll definitly be using this recipe again.

After the appetizers came the salad course. A fennel salad with apples and grapes. We had hoped that our CSA box would include fennel this week, but unfortunately they haven't started harvesting it quite yet on "our" farm. But even though the ingredients were from the grocery store, we shop at a store that tries to use local sources whenever possible to cut down on the fuel and other resources wasted to transport produce from other regions. Of course anytime you use whole fruits and vegetables in your cooking you end up with a lot of scraps. But if you put these scraps in the trashcan they go to a landfill where even organic matter has a hard time decomposing. So we save all of our fruit, veggie and other non-meat/non-dairy food waste and either feed them to the rabbit if they are fresh and healthy for her or put them in the worm compost bin. I'll talk more about vermicomposting in another blog post!


For the main course we had 5-spice cornish hens with a side of broccoli and pak choi. The 5-spice cornish hens are one of my favorite dishes for my husband to fix. We have found that buying whole spices and grinding them when we need them not only tastes better but its also less wasteful since we no longer throw out old spices that have lost their flavor since the whole spices stay fresh longer. We would like to find a local source for the hens, but so far haven't had any luck. They are stuffed with herbs from the garden and veggies (both of which went to the worms after the hens were done cooking).

For dessert we had the most amazing cheese cake from a local bakery called Cheesecakes by Alex. When Kelly picked them up from the bakery she asked them to package all the slices in one cardboard box rather than in individual plastic containers. Once we are done with the last of the cake we can recycle the box, so there is no waste involved. Alex uses fresh ingredients and is even planting his own blueberry fields so that he'll have plenty of fresh berries for his blueberry cheesecakes!

Our First Contest

Your first shipments will be headed out on Monday, but to help pass the time until they arrive lets have a contest. We'll be running contests every so often and will always post about them here on this blog. For our first contest we decided to do something easy. All you have to do is leave a comment on this message (click the "comment" button below) telling us what YOU do to be "green". This is a theme we are going to be returning to many times during this club. It seems only appropriate when we are celebrating the Six Kingdoms of Life to spend some time thinking about ways that we can help preserve our natural world.


I'll start off by telling you about one of the things I just started doing. We recently moved into a house for the first time (we've been in several apartments over the years) and with the house came a big backyard and garden. But in North Carolina we tend to have very dry summers so I knew I had to come up with a solution to the watering problem before I tried to plant anything. So I bought one of those big plastic trashcans and put it underneath one of the gutters coming off our roof. Now I can collect rainwater to water the garden without using the hose. This should save us money on our water bill as well as helping the environment by using less city water.

Please post your response by May 22nd. On the 23rd we will randomly select a winner. Because we do not have contact information for everyone (your retailers keep that information) you will need to check the blog on or after the 23rd to see if you have won and get instructions for claiming your prize.

The prize will be a special treat from The Unique Sheep, but you'll have to wait until the contest is over to find out what!


p.s. this contest is open ONLY to Six Kingdom club members. Thanks!

Spoiler Guidelines

Its finally that time! Your first packages will be shipped the beginning of next week! In preparation for that, I'd like to go over a few guidelines.

Many of you are experience yarn clubbers, so you already know how it works with “spoilers”. But for those of you who are new to this, let me explain. A “spoiler” is a comment or photo that reveals something about the shipment. Because we have members all over the world some members will get their shipments before others. And since anticipation and surprise are two of the reasons that people sign up for yarn clubs, we don’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone. The way that we avoid ruining the surprise is by only posting “spoilers” in threads that are marked with a Spoiler heading.

Many club members also post a spoiler warning at the beginning of any blog posts they make containing information or photos about club shipments.

We have spoiler graphics available for you to use if you’d like to download them to your computer. You can use them on your blogs or in your Ravelry notebooks.

We ask that if you add your yarn or projects to your Ravelry notebook you NOT post a picture of the kit in the first photo spot (i.e. the one that shows up on your main notebook page). Instead, post a spoiler graphic - either one that we provide or one of your own creation.

Sometimes people will accidentally mention something about the shipments in a discussion thread and we will have to edit the post. We check the Ravelry boards frequently and try to catch these accidents, but if you catch one that we haven’t seen you can PM us about it to draw our attention to it. If you are the one who made the mistake, please don’t be offended if we edit your comment- we are just trying to protect the surprise for others!