Natural building techniques at Villa Sobrante.

I’m a huge fan of natural building, urban homesteading and water conservation – among many other things – so I have been particularly interested in what four young women, all natural builders, have been exploring at Villa Sobrante. I got to know Lindsay, Massey, Sasha and Trilby through knitting nights at Artfibers (which they first discovered here at alicethelma.com, but that’s another story) and have even met three of their mothers.

Together they bought a boarded up, bank owned, two bedroom house occupied by squatters on a huge lot and began the process of transforming the property into a laboratory for natural building. This past weekend, they opened up the lab to conduct one of their “work parties” with the intention of insulating their back house with light straw clay.

I got there just in time for lunch on Sunday (he he) as everyone enjoyed the heat of a Northern California autumn. I think it got to be over 80 degrees. Although Sasha was in Oregon, Lindsay and Trilby are pictured on the far right while you can see Massey enjoying herself in the next photo:

This gave me a chance to explore the property. Pictured below are two earthen structures known affectionately as “pods” built by Sasha and Massey which sort of reminded me of indigenous living units. Tres cool. Technical information about these structures can be found at the VS blog.

Meanwhile, Lindsay gave me a tour of the home which was made inhabitable with the use of salvaged materials. Remember, a year ago this was a boarded up wreck of a house. It’s amazing what these women have accomplished in such a short time.

You can see Sasha’s bedroom wall made from wine boxes in the distance, past the banjo. The boxes have the added benefit of creating a unique shelf unit all held together with thin bamboo strips.

Then I saw their rainwater catchment system at the side of the house and I got really excited. WOW!

More salvaged building materials -  windows and doors – which are just as thrilling as rainwater catchment.

This being a “work” party, I helped Trilby for about five minutes mixing slip. Being an old lady such as myself, my back couldn’t tolerate the labor and I wasn’t prepared to play in the mud.

An expert at natural building, Trilby efficiently mixed the slip then tossed it with the straw…

…which was then used to insulate the walls of the building.

So what does this all have to do with knitting? Nothing really except to illustrate that knitters have lives and are involved in other activities besides knitting. In fact knitters are some of the most interesting people I know.

Colorful too.