One of many things summer means is corn – fresh, hot, buttery corn. But as I was reading of basic mattress and pillow fills that our ancestors used to use, I realized there could be more to the corn plant than just its kernels. What about the husks? My guess is that tree leaves also would work for stuffing, but husks must be stronger than a standard tree leaf, so I collected cornhusks.

Some husks I dried in my basement and some on my deck. In the second picture, you can see the sun bleached the deck ones while the basement let the green color remain. I collected the husks from about 30 ears of corn. I spread each batch out to dry after the kids husked the corn for dinner. The leaves took about 25 hours to dry out on the deck.

Stuffing the pillow was simple. Sleeping on it was the real test. At first glance, it was rather lumpy, so I folded a towel in half and slept on two layers of towel on top of the pillow. The noise was the first apparent difficulty, but as I was quite tired from unpacking boxes all day, I fell asleep easily.

With the lumps not an issue and the noise not too bothersome, the next dilemma was the compression. Halfway through the first night, the pillow flattened out, loosing maybe 2″ from the beginning of the night. To be fair, I had only stuffed it loosely and dry husks crinkle up in distorted shapes to take out a bit more room than they would have if they were fresh. Since I did not want to make this a permanent pillow, instead of drying more husks and filling it up more, I put a thin pillow underneath it and slept on both the next night. Those few nights experience was enough. Then I went back to my wool pillow, which is soft and not noisy at all.

Pros:

• Ability to adjust fill amount to get desired height
• Fresh smell of hay
• Readily available, at least seasonally

Cons:

• Would have to be firm to get enough husks in the case to give the form any height
• Would make a nice home for bed bugs

BIG NEWS! 2 showrooms in 2 states

We’re moving. Local is becoming West Lafayette, IN. Due to my husband’s job change, West Lafayette, home of Purdue University will become this business’s home as well.. All online orders will be processed out of there as well as shipping of most custom orders and swaps of all Buy and Try. We will continue to show the latex and ticking samples out of our home there.

In NorthEast Minneapolis, a friend who also believes in naturally living will open up a room in her house for a showroom. In both MN and IN, you will be able to try out the different latex densities and feel the different ticking options, as well as test the pillows and wool products out.  [EDIT July, 2015: We are now even closer to the highway in Lafayette, IN.] [EDIT: November 2015: The NE Minneapolis showroom is no in Eden Prairie, just south of Minneapolis.]

Contact information stays the same. Warranties, Buy and Try Policy and our products stay the same. To schedule showings in MN or IN, see our contact page.

Thanks to all of you in Minneapolis who have helped our business grow.  We hope we can continue to offer you bedding options that meet your needs, enable your choices and work for your pocketbook. Those reasons are the some of the best reasons to DIY.

Friday, August 15 – Tuesday, August 19  – All items in stock are 10% off.

Midnight to midnight.

This list includes all of the following items:

• Almost all pillow parts, kits and fills – Use coupon code “stock10%” at checkout for 10% off.
  • Shredded Natural Latex Pillow Kit
  • Wool Pillow Kit
  • Kapok Pillow Kit
  • Kapok by the lb.
  • Shredded Natural Latex by the lb.
  • Outer Pillow Cases
  • Inner Pillow Case
  • Quilted Pillow Case, Standard & Travel
• All Clearance items- Use coupon code “stock10%” at checkout for 10% off.
  • Latex
    • King Firm
  • Quilted Wool Ticking, Twin 6″
  • Twill Ticking, 4″ Twin
  • Twill Ticking, 6″ Crib
• Natural Latex
  • Twin Medium
  • Twin Firm
  • Full Extra Firm
  • Full Hard
  • 1/2 Queen Medium
  • 1/2 Queen Firm
  • California King Soft
• Wool
  • 3″ Topper, King
  • DIY Wool Puddle Pads
  • Wool Balls
  • Wool Felt Kit
• Quilted Wool Ticking, Twin 9″

As stock is sold, items will be removed from the sale, though will still be available for regular price purchase. Stock items will ship out on Thursday 8/21.

Why the stock sale?  In short:

Summer Vacation 8/22

Our shop will be closed for shipping from 8/22 – 9/1.  Some orders will be processed, but they may be delayed about a week. Orders may still be placed online and emails may be sent, but phone calls may not be answered until 9/1.  Thank you for giving our family a nonworking week!

Duke University is inviting you to submit a marble size sample of your couch or mattress foam. They will test 50 samples a month to see if they contain fire retardants.

To participate in their study, click here. Click around the top menu bar to see the study more. To see their findings so far, click here.

Another foraging opportunity… if you live in China or India or Cuba or really, the Tropics. This tree has silk fibers much like the kapok tree and is commonly used to make mattresses in Asia.

This plant has a very long bloom period. It opens first bloom in fall, lights up the sky throughout winter and may still have a bloom or two in spring.

Like the kapok tree, it is a dry deciduous tree that loses its leaves in the dry season and replaces them with huge, bulky red flowers near top of tree with wide petals. The flowers up to 6″ across are edible.

For interest’s sake, the red-silk cotton tree, Bombax ceiba, is sometimes mistakenly called “Kapok” because it produces floss. The true Kapok is Ceiba pentandra and is not common in Florida. The red-silk cotton is in the Malvaceae family, but is sometimes placed in the Bombacaceae family by some authors.

Just like wool mattresses, sleepers recard their silk every few years as it compacts very firmly. Natural bug-repellents are used mixed in the cotton like eucalyptus or strong versions of mint or lavender.

A study that came out last year, linked cancer to flame retardants in firefighters.  It was a thorough and one of kind study.  To quote,

“Our study provides clear evidence that firefighters are exposed to high levels of cancer-causing chemicals including brominated flame retardants and their combustion by-products – dioxins and furans – that are formed during fires by the burning of flame-retarded foam furniture, televisions, computers and building materials. Firefighters have much higher levels and different patterns of these chemicals in their blood than the general population. There is no doubt that firefighting is a dangerous occupation. What we have shown here points to the possible link between firefighting and cancer.”

During fires, large amounts of cancer-causing dioxins and furans are produced by combustion of materials containing brominated and chlorinated substrate. Since firefighters are known to have high rates of cancer, the study focuses on the exposure of firefighters to these compounds while firefighting.

Previous studies of firefighters have focused on exposure to chlorinated dioxins and furans. This pilot study is the first to measure brominated dioxins/furans (PBDD/Fs) in blood of firefighters. Because homes and offices contain large amounts of brominated flame retardants, we expected to find brominated dioxins/furans in firefighter blood.

*Brominated dioxin and furan concentrations in firefighter blood were extremely high, and were 21 times more toxic than the chlorinated dioxins and furans. The authors conclude that brominated dioxins and furans may pose a greater cancer risk to firefighters than previously thought.

*Patterns of the brominated flame retardants, PBDEs in the firefighters were dominated by deca-BDE. A deca-dominated pattern is not found in the general population, but is typical of the pattern found in blood of e waste recyclers continuously exposed to deca-BDE resulting from open burning of plastic TVs and computers.

*The firefighters also had elevated levels of two perfluorinated chemicals, PFOA and PFNA. PFOA, a cancer-causing chemical that is linked to the risk of stroke, was phased out of commerce in 2001 but is released in large amounts from household and building materials during fires.

*The findings of this pilot study indicate that firefighters are at risk for cancer and serious health effects from their occupational exposure. A larger study of firefighters is planned.

Read more about the study at the Marine Environmental Research Institute.

Hear the lead scientist talk about the findings in the video:

If you stop by the New Hope Farmers Market any Saturday (8-1) or the Golden Valley Farmers Market Sundays (8-12) this summer, make sure to stop by and say hi.

We’ll be selling our Pillow Kits and Dryer Balls and wool craft kits and hanging out all morning, every weekend.

Why we’re at a farmers market when we’re not farmers, I’m not really sure. But personally I support local farmers and appreciate those sorts of people and apparently we’re “crafters” since we DIY our products as much as possible.

New Hope is at Rockford Rd. and Xylon (the old Kmart parking lot)
Golden Valley is at 7800 Golden Valley Rd (under the watertower)

See you there.

A couple weeks ago, when the wind was sharp, the temperature was single digits and the ice was frozen, a daughter and I made a trip to a nearby lake. It is a double lake, bottlenecked in the middle with a bridge spanning that narrow opening and between the two sides of the lake, a path lined by tall cattails. We brought along a bag and made sure to wear our boots and mittens. Instead of traversing the lake, we hopped into the forest of cattails and started snapping. Snapping off the top spikes and snapping the stems beneath the fluff. A crust of icy snow kept us on top of the uneven mounds most of the time with only a few breakthroughs to snow up to our knees. The wind was calmed among the stems, almost as tall as I was.

A gentlemen walking past stopped and inquired after what we were doing. As we had already chatted with him on his first walk about the weather’s reluctance to give up winter, I considered his inquiry a friendly neighborly touch, quite in contrast to the very nervous park ranger who stopped me foraging last summer. Before we could answer, he told us we should be picking the cattails in the fall before the fluff starts to loosen. Then, he said, we could dye the cattails decorative colors and use them in table settings. I thanked him for his tip as he walked back the path again and we went back to our snapping.

With the stems poking through the bag, catching on my jeans and our bag starting to look rather full, we trotted back to the van, crunching white ice frozen in the street curbs on our way.

In the warmth of our home over a rug, I set up. One clean garbage bag for the pillowcase, one paper bag for the stems and one bag of cattails. Peeling the fluff down with my thumb, I could scrape a path in the seeds so I could bend the rest of the fluff off bit by bit. Last summer when taking pictures for the website, I stuck a stack of pillows under our grape vines and stained a pillowcase, but that left a perfect pillowcase for my purpose, especially as it was a nice, thick double knit one. Over an hour or two, I scraped and peeled the seeds into the case. Occasionally I stirred the fluff loose from itself so it would not stay clumped. You can imagine the beauty of the air around me when my almost 3 year started to help. Every wave of his cattail loosened little floating seeds that were as close as you can come to falling snow inside the house. Though the long winter’s afternoon when I let the kids shred packing Styrofoam in the living room to create a snow carnival was, hands down, a messier affair.

I slept on the pillow last night and the night before. I slept soundly and quite happily. For an adjustable fill pillow, the fill does not roll around when shaken like the shredded latex pillow, nor did I over stuff the pillow so that it would keep its shape like a couch pillow should. The cattails made the pillow flatish and softish, not firm, perhaps a little lumpy, though fill could easily be shifted to a new spot.

So if you want to forage your own cattails, get your waders on and go get them before the wind does. New stalks will be growing in May or June. I could share my spot with you as even our 100 cattails barely made a dent in the thousands that bordered this lake. If you ever want to plant some, take some seeds from your pillow as the seeds are viable for 100 years or so. And if you really want to get into cattails, look up when to eat them and their pollen.

Thanks to Tyler, a customer who bought a pillow case just for this purpose, for this idea.

Happy foraging.

While we really like to offer good deals to you and we keep our prices low so that we can make your purchases more affordable, we have realized we cannot offer free shipping on all purchases anymore.

In a few weeks, flat rate shipping will be added to every item. We will still share a bit of the shipping with you, but will have to ask that you share some of it with us too.

So if you want that free shipping while it lasts, take advantage of it.

How would you like to see decreases in pain by 84% without having to change your diet or exercise habits?

A recent study conducted showed that sleeping on wool (as well as wearing it and being in contact with it all the time) can drastically improve your feeling of health.

Apparently, those hollow, spiral fibers made of a keratin so much like our own body produces can reduce muscle stiffness and provide a better night’s sleep than ever before. For more information on the study: summary of the study.