Handmade & Homegrown: Useful Things, Old Ways & a Life Made with Care
Handmade & Homegrown
Useful Things, Old Ways & a Life Made with Care
There is something deeply satisfying about taking a few ordinary things—garden herbs, tallow, beeswax, flour, fabric or seeds—and turning them into something useful.
Not perfect.
Not mass-produced.
Not delivered to the porch before supper.
Just thoughtfully made, slowly learned and meant to serve someone well.
Welcome to Handmade & Homegrown, our Saturday gathering place for the things we make, grow, preserve and pass along.
Some weeks, we may stir a small batch of herbal balm at the kitchen counter. Other weeks, we might dry herbs, preserve part of the harvest, tie up a homemade gift or attempt something that looked considerably easier on the internet. 😂
This isn’t about doing everything from scratch or pretending modern conveniences aren’t convenient. Some of them are downright glorious.
It’s about noticing what we can make, grow, mend, preserve or share—and learning one useful thing at a time.
🧭 Compass Bearing
A handmade life isn’t necessarily an easier life.
It asks us to slow down, pay attention and become willing beginners again. But it also gives us something our hurried world often cannot: a connection to the work, the ingredients and the people who taught us.
These are the old skills worth carrying forward—not because the past was perfect, but because much of its wisdom is still useful.
👵 From Grandma’s Kitchen
Harvest herbs after the morning dew has dried but before the full heat of the afternoon.
This helps keep excess moisture out of your harvest while capturing the herbs when they are still fresh and fragrant. Give them a gentle shake, inspect them for tiny hitchhikers and dry or use them promptly.
Grandma may not have called it “preserving volatile oils.”
She simply knew when to pick the rosemary. 🌿
🧺 Gathered Here
Through Handmade & Homegrown, we’ll explore:
- Herbal balms, body care and simple home remedies
- Homemade gifts with meaning
- Garden herbs and seasonal harvests
- Drying, preserving and putting food up
- Traditional household skills
- Useful things made from simple ingredients
- Lessons learned from the women who came before us
- The occasional experiment that humbles everybody involved
We don’t have to return to another century to recover the beauty of working with our hands.
We can take what was good, combine it with what we know now and leave something useful for the ones coming behind us.
🧡 Compass Thought
A handmade home isn’t built all at once.
It grows through small, faithful acts: a seed planted, a jar filled, a remedy stirred, a recipe preserved and a gift made with one particular person in mind.
What is one thing you would love to learn to make or grow?
Find Your Way Home.
~Karen
The Twisted Compass
Notice More. Love Well. Gather Often.
