Making things and the circle of reciprocity

This week, we reached a milestone: the anniversary of moving into this house in the canyon. What has surprised me the most is how much this home has allowed us to make and create. In one aspect, we perhaps knew that being “producers in life” has become very important to Frido and me, so we looked for a space that could accommodate some of the making activities. When we saw the house for the first time, we knew that the garage and the small studio attached to it would be Frido’s long-desired creative workshop. In the hilly canyon, the idea of having enough flat space to have a sealed garage is very much a luxury. (Remember our last house in the canyon that barely had a space to park our cars on the narrow gravel road that was merely a trail in the past?? Every time we needed to maneuver Moonsea, our 21’ camper van, I thought we were going to fall off the cliff alongside the road.) Frido works on all the Truly Yours projects, so we had a rough idea of how much space he needed for that, but the expansive garage is now helping us grow into a much wider leathercraft production.

Aside from BK-related things, Frido is cooking most of the family meals, so we rarely eat out, and he recently got into baking bread (thanks to our sweet friend who gave him the best birthday gift of teaching him how to bake bread!!!). A few days a week, the entire house is warmed by our oven and filled with the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread.

I picked up the hobby of binding notebooks last summer and have now combined it with my curiosity about dying paper with plant-dyed ink, which I make from local, mostly native botanies. I’m not quite making my own paper from pulp, but binding a simple notebook from beginning to end, using hand-dyed paper for the cover, is painstakingly time-consuming. As humans, there is probably a part of all of us that gravitates towards convenience and speed. I am intrigued by the same amount of opposing force within me, pulling me towards the slowness of the notebook-making process. It feels unexplainably human to work with my hand to stitch these notebooks.

In the fall, I realized that I could create fragrant hydrosol, a water-based spray made from the steam distillation of plant materials, as a by-product of plant-dyed ink, which needs to be boiled in the water. When I connected those two dots and had an “aha” moment, I quickly looked up a makeshift method for making hydrosol with kitchen tools we already owned and started making a fresh batch to use for skin and to clear the energy. Frido watched my homebuilt chemistry lab contraption and probably didn’t want me constantly monopolizing the pots he needed for his cooking. So, for a holiday gift, he generously gave me a proper hydrosol-making kit from Italy that looks even more like a chemistry lab without any kitchen tools. Interestingly, ever since I started making hydrosol and plant-dyed ink, I've received an abundance of plant gifts from my family and friends. Even kids are bringing home a beautiful bouquet of white sage from their school farm, since their farm teacher was giving them away. There is magic in creating something new from the generosity of gifts.

Perhaps the product's functionality is the same as the one lining store aisles. I mean, hydrosol is a hydrosol at the end of the day, no matter where it was made, and a notebook is a notebook, no matter who binds it. But I can’t help but imagine how much of the relational thread is woven into those hydrosols and notebooks when they are made at our home with our own hands, using gifted ingredients shared so generously by special folks in my life. The energy of the artifact stands on love and care, not on a commodity.

When we make things from scratch, we usually end up with so much more than we can actually consume among four of us in our household. So there has also been an abundance of gifts in the form of bread, notebooks, hydrosol, and kombucha (I’m famous for brewing quite amazing homemade kombucha:) that are going back to our friends and families. So the circle of small communal making and sharing continues…

Just as I was starting to think about writing this story, I stumbled upon The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In her book, she talks about the ecosystem of the gift-based economy. It’s a short read, but it resonated with me a lot.

I am grateful for this home and the garden, which holds our ever-evolving creative process. I am in awe of the generosity of my friends and family. I appreciate my human body and my human hands, which allow me to create artifacts that carry meaning and unique energy.

… and I am deeply grateful for the circle of reciprocity I can be a part of.

I just love this photo of a pair of jeans hanging next to dyed paper made with White Sage ink. Housekeeping and creating happen simultaneously here, always.