This book I liked because it had alot of "old west' or frontier survival elements to it and without being too dry described in the process of the story how to do things like candle making etc.
I read the book about 1985 in Texas.
Story took place in some kind of frontier the west, Texes or even the edge of the frontier at first like Kentucky.
I remember it being about a girl. One part I guess her family raised wheat and maybe owned a mill? So the mother got wool and wove it together herself into cloth and sewed it into a warm winter cloak for the girls birthday. It discussed in detail the weaving, sewing and dying process and said that she traded flour for part of the materials for the cloak. I remember the girl being very surprised and grateful that she received the cloak and her mother did such hard work and even dyed it a bright blue and of course blue dye being rare and expensive.
Then she got to wear the warm pretty cloak on a old fashioned hay ride. At some point in the story it discusses soap making and candle making in fair detail as well. Also all bout hope chests and the contents of the girls.
I remember it also discussing a little boy maybe her brother making shakes or shingles to help with making a new building. That so he would know which shingles were his he was marking a cross on all of them and that an older man possibly his father said hed be faster if he didn't mark. I remember him looking at the nearly finished building and realizing that it was so tall any shingles hed marked he would not be able to seen regardless.
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