A View from Sierra County

Sustainable Sunday: Going Commercial

I have been doing some research for a super secret project (to be announced later in spring!), and found some great information to share with those of you who might have more time than money, thanks to this slow-moving, so-called economic recovery we are in.

First, I heard about SPIN Farming through my permaculture list.  This program is designed to help people take very small parcels of land that they can get hold of easily, and turn out food for market, either through direct marketing to the public (such as grower's markets) or sales to restaurants.  I toured their website, and was fascinated at their approach.  They have pioneered a way for people to use very small plots, even as small as a backyard or a 1/4 acre plot, of your own, borrowed or leased, and use bio-intensive methods to get a high yield, consistently.  Founders Wally and Gail operate a sub-acre urban farm in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and have farmed for two decades.  They decided to share their expertise with others, and help people grow urban farms in particular.  They offer a lot of business knowledge from their personal experience, and include information about speciality markets, such as raising flowers to sell.  I haven't personally met anyone using their system, but gained a lot of knowledge from their websites.  Many people are successfully contributing to their local food systems, and making a living doing it!

My region of the country is actually pretty rich in mentors these days.  California has great growing conditions, and while one of the 'homes' of agri-business in the U.S., was also the starting point for a whole slow-food, eat-local movement that has spread across the country.  I have been reading a bio of Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard, and probably one of the biggest prime movers in getting small farmers and producers going here in California.  I am lucky to have friends to turn to whenever I expand in a new direction horticulturally, but not everyone does.

One of those mentors is actually a pioneering ag supply business, Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply.   They have been in business for 35 years, providing the supplies that organic gardeners, rather than agri-biz, would need to thrive.  In the past few years, they have reached out to support a new generation of start-up small farmers, through their Freshman Farmer program. Those enrolled are mainly in the region near PV's plant in Grass Valley, and their stories are well worth the reading time.

A special note - I skipped a few weeks in my Sustainable Sunday posts; two weeks ago, I was in the midst of my ordeal with Cascade Yarns, and that process is still hanging in the air.  I got a response, then wrote to the Customer Service rep, advising her to read through all of your sympathetic and supportive comments to help her decide how to fix the situation, so wanted to leave those posts up before adding anything new to confuse her. Unfortunately, there's still not a solution, but I am moving on in my own way.  Then, I spent last weekend down with allergies/cold symptoms, and didn't have a clear enough head to post!  Upcoming topics will include high altitude gardening, bees and seed saving.  Stay tuned!

Cascade Responds

I am constantly amazed by the power of energy gathered together... don't know why, after all, I have lived through earthquakes, floods and childbirth.  Still, I am grateful for the showing of support that my fellow knitters have given me in facing my sweater-bleeding challenge with Cascade Yarns.  Thanks for being there for me and sharing my pain!  It definitely prompted the most comments I have gotten in a long while, and helped me feel supported by those who understood why a knitting tragedy could be 'such a big thing'. and better than the Cascade rep seemed to understand.  I especially want to reprint Tece's comment, in case others don't read the comments and run into a similar problem in the future:

 

Now, I am faced with a new dilemma.  Perhaps it was the power of all of you thinking about me and lending support.  Maybe I was so persuasively eloquent when I wrote that post, which I also forwarded to the same customer service representative at Cascade.  MAYBE she came and read your comments; what ever it was that happened in the cosmos, here is the answer I got back yesterday:

Hello Birdsong.

I have been thinking about how to respond to your email as I am very sorry
about my response to you in this matter - it was rushed and insensitive.
Looking at the dates, it was while I was getting ready for TNNA and the day
before I left.  Unfortunately, as a result I did not put the appropriate
time into the response or follow up with you to replace the yarn.  Normally,
I would've made sure you had received my email, found out what had happened
with your sweater, and what could be done to help rectify the situation.  I
am extremely sorry for my lack of empathy and follow-through in this
situation.

It is horrible to put hours upon hours of work into a project and have it
ruined by something that you could not have expected.  Please let me know
what can be done to make up for this.

Shannon
Cascade Yarns
[email protected]

Open Letter to Cascade Yarns

Dear Cascade:

A few years ago, I purchased a big bunch of your Cascade Sierra, in teal, with no clear intention for its use.  Then, last spring, I stumbled upon the lovely King of Confidence Cardi pattern in an issue of Knitty magazine.  I was getting ready to attend a 12-day training, and needed some knitting to see me through the lecture portions.  I hadn't intended on a colorwork sweater, but went back to my favorite LYS and purchased the three other colors needed, also in your Cascade Sierra.  Then, I knit and knit and knit.  You may or may not know, but making a sweater is far different from purchasing one.  There's love and thought and even the ambient weather conditions being knitted into each stitch.  There's care and measuring and the opportunity to create a flattering and personalized fit.  And, in the case of this particular sweater, there was the chance to measure the effects of completing a Permaculture Design Certification Course while the knitting was happening, a significant event in my personal history.

The sweater's last stitches, except for the button band, were being finished as my certification process was being completed.  My fellow students who had been following my progress were especially impressed to see the colorwork unfold. 

As you can see, the teal was very nicely set off by pale pink, pale sage, and an earthy medium brown.

I want you to take a long look at the close-up photo below.  While not of the professional quality that your company uses on its promotional materials, it clearly shows those colors, crisp and distinct from each other.

Alas, such was not the case after the sweater was finished.

I blocked the finished garment in May, and while rinsing the sweater, saw green dye floating in the water.  While laying it out to dry, noticed that the brown yarn was bleeding into the other, lighter colors.  I blotted as much water as possible out of the entire sweater yoke to prevent any further bleeding, but the garment dried with much discoloration.

The close-up below shows how the brown has seeped into the pink and sage, causing them to lose their crispness.  The colors are now blurred, and if this were a store-bought sweater purchased by a non-crafter, it would have been considered "ruined".  In my case, I had invested a lot of physical and emotional energy into this project and also have a zero-waste mindset, so was determined to make the best of a bad situation. 

However, I didn't want the same thing to happen to some other hapless knitter!  Thus began a back and forth correspondence with your company that has been very disappointing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Birdsong Sundstrom [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2010 6:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: WW Contact from web site

Name: Birdsong Sundstrom

Email: [email protected]

Comments: I am writing because I just finished a sweater using Cascade Sierra.  The body design is in teal and it features a multi-colored yoke, so
I was very alarmed to see green from the yarn filling up the water as I handwashed the sweater to block it.  This is not what I would have expected from Cascade yarns so I wanted to report it.

Here's the response I got:

Cascade Yarns - Shannon <[email protected]> to Birdsong Sundstrom <[email protected]> cc [email protected] date Sun, May 23, 2010 at 9:13 PM subject RE: WW Contact from web site

hide details 5/23/10

Hello.
Could you please send me the color number and dye lot for the color that is
bleeding?  I need this information to address this with the mill.

Thank you,
Shannon

Now, if you are reading this with more objectivity than me, you will still likely notice that there was no concern about how this turn of events had impacted me, the customer.  No apology.  However, I have an optimistic and helpful nature, and immediately responded:

Hi Shannon --

 

Thank you for your quick response!  The color number is 12 and the Dye Lot is 5793.  I know this goes back at least a few years, as I bought it from Fibers Grass Valley back in Fall 2007. 

 

Birdsong

I did expect to hear back from Cascade later, at least acknowledging that I had gotten stuck with an inferior batch of your product, and that you were sorry this happened.  Maybe a sincere hope that I would continue to be your customer. 

This is what I received instead:

6/8/10

I heard back from the mill.  Since the time that color was dyed there have been a number of improvements to our dying process to help with color fastness.   Thank you for alerting us to this issue.

Thank you,

Shannon

Once again, it's all about you and no sympathy for me, as the end user of your product!

So, you are probably wondering why I am alerting you to this NOW, and in an open forum.  First, my motivation came from wearing the sweater yesterday, for one of the first times since I finished it.  Of course, here in California it was too warm to need to wear a part-wool cardi through the late spring, summer and early fall.  But yesterday I realized that even though I won't "throw away my ruined sweater", the running colors had diminished its beauty for me,  saddened me about making and wearing it, and I hadn't been using it this winter.

I also realized that it was likely other yarn users could be suffering the same fate from your products.  Lastly, I was NOT pleased by the poor customer service Cascade has provided.  If you are in the business of wholesaling to suppliers of products for people who make things by hand, taking hours and hours to do so, the least you could do is show some human kindness and sympathy towards them when things go wrong because of something that slipped past your quality control!

While I hope that you will benefit from my contacting you, I probably will not invest more energy into your products with the blind faith that quality control has improved.

thanks for listening,

Birdsong Sundstrom, former Cascade customer

 

Sustainable Sunday: In Praise of Home Cooking

This post is dedicated to home cooks everywhere, those who love gourmet food, those who love to whip up a comfort-rich meals and all others in between!  Cooking meals from scratch is one of the best things any of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint.  It helps even more if what you start with doesn't have any pacakaging, but let's walk our way through this process step-by-step and see if Ican't convince you to hit the pans more frequently than the drive-through.

First, the items you bring home to cook are entirely under your control.  You can source the best, freshest, most local ingredients, can walk out to your garden to grab a bite to eat, and can even start putting up your own abundance so that your off-season shopping is done at home.  I think everyone agrees with that.  For those who cannot garden, there are now farmers' markets in so many areas of the country, many of which operate year-round.

Next, you have some measure of control over how much packaging hitches a ride into your kitchen along with the food. You also have control over the food-miles (how far your food has traveled to get to you).  Both of these are important sustainability considerations.  If you aren't doing so yet, spend the coming week reading the labels of the items you buy to see if you can determine how far they have traveled to get to you.  It's a lot easier to 'eat local' during the abundant summer months than it is during winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, but you might be surprised how far the food had to go... which is related to how fresh it really is.  If your store doesn't make this information readily available, especially for produce, now's your chance to ask them why not! 

Packaging can be steadily reduced by exploring the bulk bins and the deli counters in your area... what can you buy in bulk?  Even my local food cooperative clerks were surprised to see me bring the large jar I had just had them weigh (2.59 pounds) up, filled with Nevada County Free Range beef, which will go into the slow cooker early next week as part of a great tamale pie recipe DD found (always brown your meat first before adding to the slow cooker!).  It wasn't my own idea (visit Zero Waste Home), but was still a novel one to them... why not, though?  I transferred the meat into a smaller, sealed refrigerator container where it will await its turn to become dinner.

Now, we turn to food prepping and cooking... once again, you get to determine what you eat and how complex or simple the fare.  Personally, I love food and cooking, but still have those workdays when I come home with no clue what to make or maybe no energy.  From past experience, I can vouch for menu and shopping planning as one of the best remedies, even though I don't stick to that process as much as I used to when there were six people to feed in the house, and the house was an hour's drive from the nearest 'real' grocery stores.  In those days, it was essential to plan and make menus and lists, or we would all go hungry.  Now, we can manage to throw together a sandwich/salad dinner or an egg dish (thanks, hennies!) for a dinner when the energy or cupboard runs low.

What if you don't know how to cook?  This problem is rapidly growing, especially since schools stopped offering Home Economics, thanks to their concerns for standardized testing over the past decade.  No more electives, and it is a loss to home cooking.  I can recall during my high school teacher years that this was a favorite class, mostly because teenaged boys and girls alike need to consume LOTS of food to finish up their growing, and a class that allowed you to earn a decent grade while eating was a big hit.

Our local food cooperative decided to address this problem by partnering with a local chef/caterer to offer cooking classes.  Some of the various places you can locate cooking classes in your community include community colleges, adult ed courses, cooking stores, and even hospitals!  For those of you who resolved to lose weight in the new year, I want to suggest that you start by looking for a cooking class that focuses on healthy eating; you will have a much easier time figuring out how to diminish your caloric intake if you know everything in that dish and what you could substitute to keep it tasting yummy while slimming you down.

What about eating out?  Why should you give it up?  I will be the first to say, "You don't have to!", however I will also modify that by saying it's time to start applying the same principles I stated above regarding choosing foods to bring into your home, to what you purchase when eating out.  It might take more work, but you can begin looking into what your favorite eateries do about purchase decisions and packaging - both brought in to the restaurant and sent out with you.  Does your favorite coffee house discuss whether their beans are fair-traded? shade-grown? organic?  They have the purchase power to help small coffee-grower collectives earn fair wages; how do you feel about whether they exercise that purchase power or not?  Do they give you a discount for bringing in your own mug?  If not, suggest that they could save money that way and please customers at the same time.  Many fast-food chains don't have a single real dish in the place... maybe some cooking utensils, but there is no way you can get them to serve your meal to you on a plate.  By contrast, one of my favorite Grass Valley eateries regularly sends out meals on china plates, saying that all of their crockery was donated to them (making for a lot of character in the place settings) and they have no qualms about getting almost all of it back, eventually and washed clean!  They are committed to reducing their business carbon footprint, and walk their talk!  Plus, they cook up the most wonderful South American cuisine... what's not to love?

I hope to hear back from readers about how they feel about home cooking, what they do about it, and what they might consider changing about their habits.  Each step leads to another!

WIP Friday

I seem to always be running on my own, not-quite-parallel track, to other knit bloggers, so why not offer up my WIP update today?  I am happy to say that knitting is happening, and crocheting, and even some jewelry-making.  I have an order to fill later today, and Friday has become a 'work for myself' day in my life, maybe permanently as an entrepreneur, or at least until I can obtain more hours at my present job or a different one.  Sigh, the woes of the economy.  OK, that was the limit of my self-pity!  I am excited to have an order for three Tree of Life pendants to fill, as well as a sample of one to make up and send out to a fellow crafter to take with her to fairs in another part of the country.  A fifth pendant will end up on Etsy by the end of a month, also as a display model.

Sweetheart Mittens

I have talked about these a few times on the blog, which means they aren't getting done!  I have to admit that I fell in love with Kristen's pattern when I saw her one red mitten on display at the LYS, and even knowing that crochet hurts my hands more than knitting, had to buy some Frog Tree alpaca sport weight to start a pair.  I can't remember where I heard the phrase, "you can tell a knitter by what she's wearing... none of her accessories match", but it has been haunting me the past six months or more.  I decided to choose this lovely, natural medium brown shade mainly because it matches my favorite winter hat!  How novel of me, eh?  Well, alpaca will also make for very toasty-warm mittens, however the yarn is rather splitty, and the pointy tip of my Brittany birchwood hook is catching on at least a fourth of the stitches each row!  The going is a bit slow, but as you can tell, the mitten is carefully designed to fit well.  Mitten #1 can be finished this coming weekend and #2 started!

Fairwind Cardi

My Knit NIght group meets every two weeks and we started this lovely sweater as a KAL, with most of us participating.  Of course (in the 'what were we thinking' department) we started in November, just as we were all getting geared up for gifting, and a few were busy doing shows to sell their crafty wares!

I haven't felt that bad tabout what little progress has been made, after all I was busy!  Except when I pulled the sweater out of my basket to photograph it this morning, I had one of those aha moments... I have been deferring this because I am all through the yoke and in my first repeat on the lace, which I messed up big-time.  It all started with talking and knitting (and a bit of tea-drinking) and getting to the too tired point.  Then, when I realized the next time I sat down with the sweater what the problem was, my repair efforts just made things worse!  I am a patient person with lace, one of my great loves in knitting, however, an entire evening didn't fix the problem and major ripping back and re-working will need to take place to get through those first few repeats.  This is not a particularly complicated pattern, but it can be when you miss your mistake and then try to repair it from a few rows above.  Look for a more positive update soon!  The yarn is Classic Elite Magnolia, and is just beautiful... the color has been hard to capture, either photographing too orange-y or too pinkilish (one of my chlldrens' invented words, which has stuck in our family's culture!).  It is actually a very lovely warm shell pink.  I know I will adore wearing this sweater through the spring, which will come sooner than we think, so plan to spend some time tonight fixing my mistake and getting back on track.

Kaellingesjal Shawl

I have a small tradition of staring a shawl on New Year's Day, and this year was no exception.  It may not really count as a tradition until I have lived a few more decades, but at least a few of the ones I have made in recent years were started as part of bringing in the new, and this year's choice is a re-construction of a historical piece, the pattern unearthed on Ravelry after having been lovingly deciphered by Mette Rorbech.  The original was made in 1897, and lives now at the Vendsyssel Museum in Denmark.  Isn't this world at this time such an amazing place for us fiber-loving fanatics?  I will probably never make it to Denmark to the Vendsyssel Museum to view this shawl in this lifetime, and the odds would have been against my stumbling on an article in a print magazine two or three decades even describing it, or offering a pattern!

Luckily for me, this wonderful shawl is now available to me, a lover of all things Victorian and Elizabethan, who can now create something to wear with the costumes I end up donning several times a year for re-enactment events. 

I am using a heavier laceweight from my stash, from the Wooly Wonka lace club a few years back.  I loved the deep green color and always wanted to save it for this purpose.  I also adore how this shawl was designed to be tied in the back, a true working woman's shawl!  The pattern is a bit more of a recipe, but having been a big fan of Elizabeth Zimmerman's work over the past few decades, that does not appear too daunting, at least not yet.  So far, the bottom edging I am working is only a foot and a half, and needs to be my wingspan, then a corner for the bottom shawl point knitted, and then another wingspan's worth for the other side!  I believe this will be a long, leisurely and loving knit!

Lastly, an update on the Flora dolly, from my DDIL, who interpreted FO as follow-up, providing a new view of how Flora is faring at their house:

"Ok, heres my own FO! lol. Odessa LOVES her dolly now!!! She totes her all around the house. I keep her in her toy hanger on her crib and every morning when I go in to get her she has pulled her out and has her in the crib with her! So don't... worry, your efforts are very much appreciated! It just took awhile or her to bond with Flora, thats all! Hehe. Also, I have worn my necklace like 4 times already since Xmas...and considering what a ridiculous amount of jewelry I own, thats HUGE!!! I love it soooo much!!! As for the "precious metal firing," are you referring to art-clay?? This is something I am HUGELY interested in, so if thats the same thing you're referring to please feel free to foward me any info you find!" 

Now don't you just bet that MADE my day?!

Holiday Gifting Review

The end of 2010 has come and gone and we are all launched on new projects, but I realized I hadn't shown any photos of all the 'secret' knitting and crafting I had done for Christmas presents, so this will be a "FO" post, instead of WIP Wednesday.

Dearest Granddaughter got the bulk of the grammie-made gifts this year...

This cute little coat is Knitting Pure and Simple #1010 (Ravelry link), and it is just adorable. I got the idea from Sharon, who made it for her granddaughter last summer, and for some reason it hasn't been 'discovered' on Ravelry yet... no other projects when I started, and I think I am the only one to list it as a FO!  I used some nice superwash merino hand-dyed by the Lake Tahoe Yarn Company, and unfortunately there was less than a yard left when I finished... not sure if it was the yarn, the pattern, or me that was off!! Luckily I had already gotten concerned before the sleeves, and made the coat a bit shorter than called for!  As I was sweating it out, I kept muttering to myself "This is why I hate Christmas knitting", but then turned around and made a few more gifts.  Guess it really IS hard to teach an old dog new tricks!  The little red hat was knitted up by a co-worker's mother, who made something like 50 hats as a benefit for our program (we sold most at the annual town Holiday Fair), and I had already selected the red buttons, so bought it instead of making one.

Here's a photo of Odessa modeling her new Victorian coat, along with several of the rest of us on Christmas Eve... I am the one right behind her, she is walking towards her Daddy (dear youngest son), and Mommy, to his right, and DD is pointing the way.

Odessa also got a handknitted dolly from Grammie B. for Christmas... her name is Flora and I found her as a kit this summer.  The pattern is available here on Ravelry.  I am saying this moment that I will never make such a fussy little project again, but have been known for making lots of toys in the past... she was quite a bit fussier than average and took an unexpectedly large amount of time to knit, felt, finish, construct, and especially to sew on the hair!  And I'm not even sure Odessa liked her!  There were definitely more appealing things under the tree... time will tell if a true fondness develops.

The next photo is of a 'beanie' I knitted for step-grandson, Mason... on Thanksgiving, it was a big, giggling secret to ask if I would make him one, and he was so delighted with it, and with the fact that it was red (the color he asked for!), that he promptly pulled it on and wore it the rest of Christmas Eve!  Now that really IS heart-warming to a knitting grammie!  In the photo, he is handing a small package to DH; turns out he had one for each of us and they contained balsawood pre-cut ornaments that DD had gotten for him so that he could join in the gift-making process at a young age.  Can you tell she's my grrl?!

I really DO make a point to avoid the stressed-out, last-minute Christmas gift-knitting trap that I used to fall into consistently for decades, so that is the end... of the knitting.

However, since I have begun working with jewelry-making again, though heading in a new direction of wirework, stamping, steampunk, and precious metal firing (well, the last is a new interest I am studying up on...), I spent the last few days before our gathering turning out a special gift for DD and DDIL.

   The silver necklace was a Family Tree of Life for DD, with her birthstone (peridot), BF's, two colors of tourmaline, and pearly bead flowers to represent Mason's birthday.

The bronze one is for DIL, a Family Tree of Life with amethyst for son Jesse, aquamarine for Dawn, and sapphire-blue flowers of crystal beads for baby grrl, Odessa.

I was pleased with them both, and even happier when eldest son, after seeing the photos, got me orders for three similar pendants!

There has been work on new projects since the flurry of gift-making subsided. The one continuing to occupy my time the most currently has been my Sweetheart crocheted mittens.  They proceed rather slowly, in part because I don't crochet quite as fast as I knit, but mainly because the Frog Tree alpaca yarn is pretty dang splitty!  I love how the mitten is customized to fit the hand very well, including curving around the base of the thumb.  I promise a WIP post with photos soon, to show off mitten progress, the lovely Fairwind (which has been sadly neglected through the holiday season) and to let you in on a new lace project, not yet photographed.  Stay with me as a whole new decade unfolds... onward and upward!

Oh, and if I haven't replied to recent comments, please blame Typepad.  I noticed that since the first of the year, I wasn't getting comments forwarded, despite the fact that I hadn't changed my preferences.  I sent in a help ticket this morning and am awaiting word... though not on baited breath!

Thanks to everyone who has commented the past few days... for some idiotic reason Typepad hasn't picked up your desire to let me email you back or has gone on strike, refusing to forward your comments to me, in spite of how my 'preferences' are set. Love to all, in real time from a real person.

Sustainable Sunday: New Year's Resolutions

It's a tradition to make resolutions for improvement at the start of each new year, and to also take stock of our lives as the old year closes. I have been pretty happy with how the past year wound its course, but there is always room for improvement! Here's my list of "Sustainability Resolutions":

1. Return to regular Sustainable Sunday posts! I do have a lot more material to share with everyone. My Internet connection woes may improve; the service provider insisted that repairs would be in place by the end of 2010, and the tenant who was splitting bandwidth with us just moved... time will tell, but I will also try to plan and build posts throughout the week so that they are waiting each Sunday.

2.  Attack that junk mail problem once again!  I don't know about you, but this is a resolution that has been on my list several times in the past.  I have diligently contacted the various people supposedly in charge of 'lists' and asked to be removed, only to find that by December of the following year, I am still getting way too much un-requested mail that adds to my household's waste stream.  Here's the list of websites I am trying this time:

Direct Marketing Association: www.dmachoice.org

Credit card offers: www.optoutprescreen.org

Glossy catalogs: www.catalogchoice.org

I also intend to turn back around those offers and solicitations that come with first class, postage-paid envelopes and mail all the 'stuff' back along with my request to be dropped from their list.

3. Refuse, Refuse, Refuse!  No more free samples for me, no free pens, extra calendars, etc.  There has been a major uptick in giving freebies, using postcards, etc., to promote businesses and products in recent years.  I can remember, 'back in the day', when my mama only had business cards to pass out as a real estate broker; now, everyone has gone to glossy postcards or brochures placed in plastic holders on counters.  I am also weighing carefully which magazines to discontinue.  DH and I are readers; we like to hold things in our hands and kick back in our chairs and luxuriate in reading.  That said, I have some powerful resources to help me break the print habit - a great library system with online request service, and the fiber guild, which buys the latest books and subscribes to the most useful magazines then lets us all share them.

4.  Extend my 'bring a bag' habit further!  Some of you outside of California might not have heard, but San Francisco was the first US city to ban plastic shopping bags in March 2007, initially for large grocery and pharmacy stores only, though the ordinance may be expanded.  Several other large CA metro areas were quick on their heels.  Here's why:  

Last week, I learned about one family's efforts to move towards a Zero Waste household in an article in January's Sunset magazine, and decided that I could easily add more containers and 'sub-bags' to my shopping collection, filling them with bulk items at my local stores and avoiding bringing home even more refuse. I realized I would have to work more closely on my impulse shopping habits, and write a list in advance that includes figuring out what container I need to bring as well. For example, when I shop for groceries later this week, I will be bringing a bottle with a cap for canola oil, and a jar for almond butter, both available in bulk at my local co-op. I will also need to cultivate cordial relations with the clerks at these stores, as each container needs to be checked for tare weight in advance of filling, and checking out may take a bit longer. I am guessing they would prefer that such customers come during the slower parts of the day.

5. Use What I Have!  This isn't always easy in a culture that puts a heavy emphasis on 'consume, consume, consume'.  Luckily, I am a maker at heart and already do a lot of re-purposing and thrifting. However, as an artist, it is often hard to resist items with 'potential'.  Part of this weekend has been spent in either finishing up WIPs, such as hemming two skirts I found over a year ago (ugh! hate to admit to such procrastination), or getting real with myself and passing some of the supplies along to others.  I have several pounds of such supplies bundled up and awaiting re-distribution, and feel much lighter!  I also made a 'new' bathroom rug, loosely following a pattern in Soule Mama's Handmade Home book.  The top portion, a flannel monkey print, is from a pillowcase I picked up at a thrift store, intending to use it for something for my grandbaby... she turned up in pjs with the same print shortly thereafter (yet another example of great minds thinking alike!), the backing is a bathmat found at another thrift shop, neutral in color, unstained and adding a cushion factor.  The red stripes, which help absorb some of the moisture when you initially step out, are polarfleece left over from a sewing project.

Not to fear, dear grandchild still benefitted, with another small sewing project this weekend, which created a new dolly skirt from leftover quilting fabrics.  I also benefitted from realizing that my creative urges don't always need to start at the yarn or fabric store!

Note: Thanks to Luci for letting me know that the video wasn't working, nor Soule Mama's link... I have fixed both!

Happy New Year!

And all best wishes here at snowy Slate Range Camp!  Thanks to those who have followed my blogging escapades for over six years now, and may we all head off to new adventures in the coming decade.

Peace and Love!