Homestead Books

Title	Author	Classification	Early Relevance
*The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible	Edward Smith	Garden Planning	1
The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving	Judi Kingry	Food Preservation	2
Fermented Vegetables	Kirsten & Christopher Shockey	Food Preservation	3
The Everything Soapmaking Book	Alicia Grosso	Soap	4
Gaia's Garden	Toby Hemenway	Garden Planning	5
*Encyclopedia of Country Living	Carla Emery	General Overview	6
The First-Time Homesteader	Jessica Sowards	General Overview	7
Country Wisdom and Know-How	Editors of Storey Publishing	General Overview	8
The Backyard Homestead	Carleen Madigan	General Overview	9
Seed to Seed	Suzanne Ashworth	Garden Planning	10
*The Vegetable Gardener's Bible	Edward Smith	Garden Planning	11
*The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener	Nicki Jabbour	Greenhouse	12
The Art of Fermentation	Sandor Ellix Katz	Food Preservation	13
Freeze-Drying the Harvest	Carolyn Thomas	Food Preservation	14
Dirt to Soil	Gabe Brown	Land Management	15
Restoring Ecological Health to your Land	Steven I. Apfelbaum/Alan W. Haney	Land Management	16
The Modern Herbal Dispensatory	Easley & Horne	Health	17
Medical Herbalism	David Hoffmann	Health	18
Building Small Barns, Sheds, & Shelters	Monte Burch	Structures	19
Humane Livestock Handling	Temple Grandin	Livestock	20
The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals	Gail Damerow	Livestock	21
*Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens	Gail Damerow	Livestock	22
The Homesteader's Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook	Amy Fewell	Livestock	23
The Chicken Health Handbook	Gail Damerow	Livestock	24
Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks	Dave Holderread	Livestock	25
The Beginner's Guide to Beekeeping	Samantha & Daniel Johnson	Beekeeping	26
Keeping Bees with a Smile	Fedor Lazutin	Beekeeping	27
The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook	Carol Ekarius/Deborah Robson	Wool	28
The Joy of Keeping a Root Cellar	Jennifer Megyesi	Food Preservation	29
Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep	Paula Simmons/Carol Ekarius	Livestock	30
Getting Started with Beed and Dairy Cattle	Heather Smith Thomas	Livestock	31
The Art of Natural Cheesemaking	David Asher	Cheese	32
Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking	Gianaclis Caldwell	Cheese	33

Palia Links

 Wiki: https://palia.wiki.gg/

Rummage: https://palia.th.gl/rummage-pile?map=elderwood

Keeping Track of Discworld

In June I scooped up a big pile of Discworld books at a used bookstore. They were near the register, I was in line, and I had just enough room in my arms for all of them. I knew that Discworld was broken into series, but I didn't quite know what I'd done until I got home...

I purchased: The Colour of Magic, Courcery, Mort, Wyrd Sisters, I Shall Wear Midnight, and Pyramids. I already owned Thief of Time and Guards! Guards!

I have one or two books per series.

Here's what I need, and the books "in order" for each series... I think. Books in bold font are books that I now have. Books in italics are books that have been ordered but have not yet arrived.

I HAVE THEM ALL! 

 

Rincewind
1. The Colour of Magic (1)
2. The Light Fantastic (2)
3. Sourcery (5)
4. Faust Eric (9)
5. Interesting Times (17)
6. The Last Continent (22)
7. The Last Hero (27)

The Watch
1. Guards! Guards! (8)
2. Men at Arms (15)
3. Feet of Clay (19)
4. Jingo (21)
5. The Fifth Elephant (24)
6. Night Watch (29)
7. Thud! (34)
8. Snuff (39)

Death
1. Mort (4)
2. Reaper Man (11)
3. Soul Music (16) (potentially lost, search ID MRC 25 2199 2819| update: ordered again)
4. Hogfather (20)
5. Thief of Time (26)

Witches
1. Equal Rites (3)
2. Wyrd Sisters (6)
3. Witches Abroad (12)
4. Lords and Ladies (14)
5. Maskerade (18)
6. Carpe Jugulum (23)

Tiffany Aching
1. The Wee Free Men (30)
2. A Hat Full of Sky (32)
3. Wintersmith (35)
4. I Shall Wear Midnight (38)
5. The Shepherd's Crown (41)

Moist von Lipwig
1. Going Postal (33)
2. Making Money (36)
3. Raising Steam (40)

Standalone
1. Pyramids (7)
2. Moving Pictures (10)
3. Small Gods (13)
4. The Truth (25)
5. Monstrous Regiment (31)
6. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (28)
7. Unseen Academicals (37)

Presenting On Costumes??

 

1.      Introduction

a.      Who am I?

b.     What do I do?

2.      The Beginning Begins

a.      The First Costume I Made – Blue Fairy

b.     The First Garment I Sewed – The Jacket

c.      Where I Became Hooked – Mistaken for Cast

3.      Inspiration

a.      The Honeycomb Fairy – Inspiration Strikes

                                                              i.      How Inspiration can come from the most innocuous places – a note left on a desk, a roll of chicken wire…

b.     Summer Vikings – Historically Inspired & Learning Something New

                                                              i.      How did this actually work? Will it work in this situation?

                                                            ii.      How to decide what to change from “accurate” to “practical”

                                                          iii.      Learning to dye and the worlds it opened

4.      Design

a.      Layers to a Costume – Telling a Story

                                                              i.      First Visual Layer – Something that will be noticed from a distance (Honeycomb Wings)

                                                            ii.      Second Visual Layer – Something noticeable at conversation distance (Bees all over)

                                                          iii.      Third Visual Layer – Something to find when inspecting (honeycomb stitching on the stays)

b.     The Strawberry Fairy – Designing for Someone Else

                                                              i.      Pictures of pink & gold fairy

                                                            ii.      Pictures of Barbarian

                                                          iii.      Picture of K&R

c.      The Tartan Dresses – Using Someone Else’s Ideas

                                                              i.      Sewing patterns & their suitability

d.     The Patchwork Plague Doctor and the Pirate – Drawing on my Sewing Roots & Costume Iteration

                                                              i.      The OG Plague Doctor (coat & pants version, display Mask)

                                                            ii.      The OG Pirate (Corset [choices between historical accuracy and aesthetic – stays vs. Victorian corset], shirt, shared pants)

                                                          iii.      Changes to Both

1.      Plague Doctor – “quilted” forepart, convert whole thing to a dress, remove the coat

2.      Pirate – Add the coat without sleeves, balance it out with a hat, add accessories that tell a story (navigational equipment)

5.      Sourcing Materials

a.      Patterns

                                                              i.      Historical records (Vikings)

                                                            ii.      Self-drafted (Honeycomb stays, skirts, chemise)

                                                          iii.      Etsy (Baroness Bodice for Tartan Dresses)

                                                          iv.      Commercial Patterns (Pirate coat)

b.     Fabrics

                                                              i.      Online (Etsy, deadstock retailers, specialty sellers [linen, Spoonflower])

                                                            ii.      In Person (Big Box Stores, quilt shops, deadstock retailers)

c.      Trims

                                                              i.      Online

                                                            ii.      In Person

                                                          iii.      Self-made (display woven trim on loom?)

6.      Lessons Learned

a.      Seam Finishes Matter

b.     Bigger Isn’t Always Better

c.      Natural Fibers Are (almost) Always Better

d.     The Three Foot Rule

e.      Always Be Learning!

                                                              i.      Skills I’ve picked up for costuming include: band weaving, resin pouring, fabric dyeing & a multitude of techniques, chainmaille, beading, pattern drafting, flower arranging, millinery, etc.

Props: Husband in Viking, Sister in Strawberry, me in Plague, Honeycomb on mannequin, other costumes on hangers (?), loom, hats.

Sand in the sandbox:

Do you ever see someone wearing an outfit and you thing 'wow, why are they like that?' Well, I can tell you why I'm like this. When I was eight years old my parents took me to my very first renaissance festival. We went every year after that, and eventually I told them that I wanted to save my birthday and Christmas money to get my own costume. That's when Mom said the words that changed my life: why don't we just make one?

I grew up sewing and that thought had never occurred to me! Around the time of that first festival, Mom started plugging me in to her quilting projects. 'Sew this straight line, snip these pieces apart, press just like that,' so I wasn't exactly new to a sewing machine... But quilting and sewing clothing are not the same. We'll get to that later. For this first costume we went to the Goodwill on Boulevard in Tulsa and bought the biggest, poofiest prom dress we could find in my size. Then we removed about 80% of the skirt and I got my dad to help me make my first pair of wings. They were enormous and banged into everything I went near. They didn't stay lined up properly. They hurt to wear. And I loved them. I had made a costume and I was on top of the world.

And I was hooked.

I didn't make anything from the ground up for a few years, instead just pulling this dress or another prom dress with a corseted bodice out and wearing that, but I was wearing my own costumes. Eventually I thought I wanted something that I could wear out in the real world and I picked out a jacket pattern at Wal-Mart. Mom helped me pick out the fabric. My lovely quilters, did you know that 'seam allowance' is NOT universal? I had exclusively sewn with a quarter-inch allowance to that point and I fought with a sleeve for three hours before Mom called in help. There were tears. There was yelling. I was ready to quit. But a member of the Scrap Happy guild down in Okmulgee came over and just -doot!- scooted the project over a little bit under that presser foot and everything suddenly worked.

I wore the jacket maybe twice? My sister has it now. But I did it. I made a wearable piece of clothing.

From there I moved in to costume pieces and started with a bodice. It laced together in three pieces in the front, and I used watch bands and buckles for the center front. I made wings out of panty hose and coat hangers, and I used a thrifted skirt that was already a thousand different kinds of fabric in one. That was the year I went from 'hooked' to 'ok, so this is my personality now.' Two of the girls on the cast at the festival mistook me for a fellow cast-member. I was doing it all right! I looked like I belonged there!

And then I got married and things slowed down for a while while I live in OKC with my husband. When we moved back to Tulsa, and consequently closer to the renaissance festival, I started wanting something new but the ideas just weren't flowing. I got a job working in the same building as my dad, and I know that sounds out of left field but this is how fast inspiration can strike. I'd gone to the store for a snack and brought him back some but he wasn't at his desk so I left a note. It just said 'The honeycomb fairy visited you...' and by the time I got back to my desk I had a plan fully fleshed out. [this is where the costume on the mannequin gets pointed at]. Just all this dripping gold and any sort of golden hexagon I could find. We were at my parents' house one day when I saw some chicken wire laying next to their trash can and my brain just went 'WINGS!' Candy and trash, that's all it takes.

Now, the Honeycomb Fairy was easy. There are historical elements in there but it's largely fantasy so I could break as many rules as I wanted, but what about historical inspiration?

The year after my husband and I bought our house I got a season pass to the Muskogee festival and started going every weekend. In order to spend any time with me Hubby needed to go, too, and he wanted something he could wear. Now, he's from southwest Colorado and still hasn't adjusted to the heat out here, so finding something was tricky. We landed on Vikings. This was going to be my first historically-inspired costume so I started doing research. Vikings wore a lot of wool and a lot of layers and that wasn't going to work so we would need to adapt. I swapped wool for linen, which made the garments much more breathable and cool. We decided to go with light colors to reflect the heat instead of absorb it, too. The way these pieces were cut from the fabric may have been how it was originally done - all blocks and triangles, as these are very close to zero-waste patterns - and the shapes are accurate to some archaeological finds, but I put a modern spin on the project. We changed out fabrics to suit our needs, and I sewed with a machine. What you are seeing on Hubby and hanging over here to my side are the second iteration of these costumes, and if you look inside the dress you will see French seams and French felling, as well as evidence of some serging. These are more modern alterations that I made in the name of durability. For lightfastness and ease of care, the dyes I used for all of it are chemical and not natural, as well.

Testing Fabric

 Bleach

- Protein fibers (wool, silk) dissolve completely in bleach, foam after a few seconds.

Burn

- Wool - Flame resistant, burnt hair odor, crunchy dark powder ash with soft edge
- Silk - Flame resistant (will catch but will self-extinguish), burnt hair odor, dark powder ash

- Cotton - Burning paper smell, burn fast and bright with after glow, soft grey ash
- Linen - Burning paper smell, burn fast and bright (catches slow) with after glow, soft grey ash

- Polyester, Nylon, Spandex, Acrylic - Melt before catching, if it does catch will burn quickly, strong chemical odor, no ash but leaves a hard plastic crust, may pucker fabric

- Rayon - Catches quickly, after glow, paper plus chemical smell, soft grey ash
- Acetate - May resemble polyester in symptoms but with a vinegar smell

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtJ5ukWundY, https://www.patreon.com/posts/123845098?pr=true

Reading Challenge

 I think I want to read 12 biographies this year. Here are the ones I am feeling:

*January - J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter
February - Tall, Dark, and Gruesome by Christopher Lee
March - The Baroness of New Orleans by Christina Vella
April - Goddess and the Girl Next Door: Julie d'Aubigny and Her World by Olga Peters Hasty
May - Black Bart Roberts: The Greatest Pirate of Them All by Terry Breverton
June - Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist by Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin, and Adrian Rice
July - My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine Johnson
August -  Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea by Kathleen Broome Williams
September - Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
October - Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu
November - Lady Death: The memoirs of Stalin's Sniper by Lyudmila Pavlichenko
December - Madame Curie: A Biography by Eve Curie

I also want to read 12 banned books, mostly Classics:

*To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (across US, racism and profanity)
*The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Oklahoma, negative Dust Bowl depiction)
*Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Tulsa specifically, promotion of rebellion, sexual themes, profanity)
*1984 by George Orwell (across US, pro-communism)
*Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Across US, anti-authoritarian)
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Edmond, profanity, sexual themes, anti-war themes)
*Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Oklahoma, profanity, violence)
*The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Edmond, profanity, sexual references, poverty and addiction)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Oklahoma, sexual violence, profanity, LGBTQ+ themes)
*Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (Oklahoma, racial slurs, profanity, violence)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Moore, Police brutality, profanity, criticism of Law Enforcement)

And 12 books about my tribe:
See the other post.

* Books on my shelf. All others will need finding.

Native Books to Find

A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks - Jean and Joyce Chaudhuri Already Owned

Creek Indian Medicine Ways: The Enduring Power of Mvskoke Religion - David Lewis Jr. & Ann T. Jordan Ordered 7/14/25

Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity - Laura Harjo Ordered 3/18/25

Chief William McIntosh: Mvskoke Creek Warrior: 1777-1825 - Billie Jane McIntosh

Old Tallahassee Ceremonial Ground of the Creek Nation: Nene Mvskoke - Fus Fixico

The Bear is My Father: Indigenous Wisdom of a Muscogee Creek Caretaker of Sacred Ways - Reginah Waterspirit & Bear Heart Ordered 2/25/25

The Wind is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman - Bear Heart with Molly Larkin Ordered 2/25/25

Creek Religion & Medicine - John R. Swanton

Chinnubbie and the Owl: Muscogee (Creek) Stories, Orations, and Oral Traditions - Alexander Posey Ordered 6/27/25

The History & Material Culture of the Muscogee Creek in Alabama and Georgia - Lloyd E. Schroder Ordered 2/25/25

Lighting the Way: The Dawe Commission and the Creek Nation - James R. Scales & Danney Goble

The World of the Southern Indians - Laurella Owens & Virginia Pounds Brown Ordered 5/22/25

Southern Indian Myths and Legends - Laurella Owens & Virginia Pounds Brown Ordered 7/14/25

The Southeastern Indians - Charles Hudson Ordered 1/22/25

Muscogee (Creek) Nation History - Jon Sterba

The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 - Steven C. Hahn

A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 - Claudio Saunt Ordered 6/30/25

Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World, 1796-1816 - Robbie Ethridge

Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South - Chrostopher D. Haveman

Creek Indian History: A Historical Narrative of the Genealogy, Traditions and Downfall of the Ispocoga or Creek Indian Tribe of Indians - George Stiggins

A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma - Robert J Miller

The Fus Fixico Letters: A Creek Humorist in Early Oklahoma - Alexander Posey Ordered 6/30/25

Lost Creeks: Collected Journals - Alexander Posey

Drawing by Stealth: John Trumbull and the Creek Indians - Virigina Pounds Brown and Linda McNair Cohen Ordered 5/22/25

Wynema: A Child of the Forest - S. Alice Callahan Ordered 7/14/25