Happy New Year!!

It's freezing cold with a few inches of snow covering the ground at my house. I hate to say it but it does look pretty with all the brown covered. Here's a picture of how I keep the girl's legs warm during a cold day.

These are called Babylegs, but I remember them as legwarmers.

These are as cute or cuter than tights. Since my 4 year old, pictured above, can't stand tights, these are my new best friend.  They come in one size and about a 100 different colors. I'm going to be making some out of recycled cashmere sweaters. Can you imagine wearing cashmere on your legs? Maybe mommy needs a pair too!

How to Felt a Sweater to make it Leak Proof

First you will need a soft wool sweater. The best place to get wool is in a thrift store. When you go, you are looking for sweaters with no less than 80% wool. Cashmere, Merino, Alpaca, and Agora are all types of wool and of course it can be listed as just wool on the tag. A combination of any of these works great. If it isn't listed at tag on neck look inside on the side seam. I also recommend lighter weight sweater that aren't to bulky.  Make sure the sweater is soft when you rub it against your cheek. Try to stick to Men's size large and Women's large or X-large. The sweater will shrink to half it's size when felted. You will be using the arms and lower portion of the sweater, so have fun with patterns and designs.

Felting
This is a fancy word for shrinking your sweater to make it leak proof.
*A word of caution: You should felt sweaters of like colors together. I learned the hard way that when sweaters are felting the fibers from other sweater will stick together. Think white sweater with red fuzz all over it.*

Wash your sweater in hot water without laundry soap, you will wash it with soap after you make your project.  I dried my sweater in the dryer after washing them and don't recommend it. It made the sweater very pilly. This just added another step of removing the piling. Just lay it on a towel on the table. You may need to wash a lighter weight sweater twice to get it to felt tighter. I washed my Merino sweaters twice and the regular wool once. The rule of thumb is, if your adult large now looks more like a child's large it's felted.

First Post---Making wool longies and wool bum sweater

I'm going to just jump into this blog at where I am right now. I'm going to bore people with endless background information.

This week at our house I'm making wool longies and wool soakers. Ok so Longies are long wool pants that you put over a cloth diaper so that it doesn't leak. A Bum Sweater is just a shorter verison of longies. Here's a cloth prefold diaper.

Here is a picture of a finished wool longie and wool bum sweater aka: soaker cover.

These were so easy to make. In the next few days I will be posting the instructions and pictures on how to make both of these. I would do it sooner but I have a sick baby at my house.

The new Blog

I hope this blog will give a fresh look at "Going Green".  I had many questions and concerns when I started to make changes in my families lifestyle. I would spend days researching everything from household cleaning products to cloth diapers.  This is my way of helping others to easily navigate through the change over process.  I'm not claiming to be an authority on green living but I know what I have tried and what works for my family. I will be adding how-to videos on my adventures.  Please feel free to comment and email with things you would like to see or anything you're wondering about.