Crowdfunding donation - Week two

I promised last week to donate $5 every week to another crowdfunding project, as I believe that this is a great way for us all to support each other and get things done.
This week I have chosen a health related project to give my five dollars to; Cystic Fibrosis Vest.

Cystic fibrosis is a truly horrible genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system.
The vest seems to be a high tech version of the old 'lay facedown on the bed while mum pounds your back' cure for mucus in the lungs. I hope this little boy gets his vest and it improves his quality of life.

New interest; crowdfunding

I have just discovered crowdfunding and I am exploring the options and possibilities of it right now. There are so many projects I have wanted to do for a long time, but funding, or the lack of it, always stops me.

What is crowdfunding? Well the basic idea is that individuals donate small amounts of money to a project via Paypal or direct transfer. It's an offshoot of the social media craze. The specifics, as I understand them so far, are that a website hosts the project (there are heaps of them, a google search will reveal them all) and people use social media to advertise their project and gain sponsors, people donate using Paypal or bank transfer.
The basic question is always 'Who makes money out of this?' Well, the hosting site and Paypal both get a small percentage from each donation, and the people who are seeking the funding get the majority of the funds. I am very excited by the possibilities of this method of fund raising, especially for small personal projects and things outside the norm.

The biggest success for crowdfunding in the media of late is the Climate Council's raising of enough funds to continue operation despite losing government backing and the silliest has to be the case of the man who raised $37000 to make potato salad.

 Having read these media reports and thought about it for a few days...I decided to launch my own campaign. My reasoning is this...we pay 52% of our total family income to a bank in order to (eventually) own the block of land on which our humpy stands, if we can crowdfund enough money to pay off this debt (and avoid all that interest payment) we can spend a proportion of that money onwards to other people's projects. I see it as a way to break the hold of the banks on our purchasing choices, try getting a loan for a rural property with a small deposit some time.

The link to my campaign is;

As part of my 'putting my money where my mouth is' policy, I have decided to fund one project every week for $5 while I can afford it. I will post the project I choose on my personal Facebook page and also on this blog.

This week I chose;

Everyone knows I have a soft spot for animals.

I would love to hear views on this new interest; is crowdfunding a valid way to raise funds, or is it just begging?
Do you have a crowdfund project on the go? Send me the details and I may donate.
Can crowdfunding change the way we use money?
What do you think?

Upcycling an old chest of draws into a garden feature

After a cold morning spent drinking coffee and googling garden upcycling  ideas on my phone, I decided to use an old chest of draws from the 'to burn' pile as a useful garden feature. My daughter and I dragged it around to where we wanted it, lined the draws with builders plastic (also reclaimed), filled them with chook compost and potting mix and planted some Johnny Jump Ups in them. We also sprinkled around some seeds for Love in the Mist (Nigella), calendula (pot marigold) and marigolds to add some more colour to the mix.

We also planted out some old terracotta pots with flower seedlings and seeds and left them lying artfully around. I must say the entire experience was very satisfying.

Until recently I have not been a flowers person; I prefer to grow food and herbs, but lately I find myself drawn to colour and flowers in the garden. Maybe I'm getting old.

I can imagine this feature spilling over with green, purple and yellow in a month or so, can you?

Happy late Yule to all

Happy Yule to all

We were about two weeks late for Yule this year but when we did get to it we had a lot of fun.

Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice; the shortest day of the year which falls on the 21st/22nd of June here in the southern hemisphere. It is the time of the long, dark, cold night that reminds us of the suffering our ancestors went through to survive this time of year, when food is scarce and it seems that the warm days of spring may never come. To answer these feelings we have a feast (showing faith that we will be able to grow more food) and light a fire as a symbol that the sun will return and grows stronger from this time onwards to Litha (summer solstice).

We celebrate Yule by thanking the elements for another year of abundance, telling stories and lighting a candle each to symbolise the rebirth of the Sun. We also have a bonfire and swap handmade presents. This year I got a beautiful crochet poncho. In past years we have decorated an evergreen tree with solar symbols and decorated the circle with branches, but as there are only us old pagans left we toned it down to the essentials.
One element that is always present though is the gluhwein (mulled wine). It warms the blood and makes the long night speed by.

Getting everything ready for the ritual (making a list, checking it twice)

The master bonfire maker.

The apprentice

Our altar, ready to go as the darkness fell. Presents, candles and gluhwein (mulled, spiced wine)

The glorious bonfire, giving us warmth and light.

The candles burned down as the night went on, feasting and talking. They made frozen wax waterfalls.

The bonfire burned down to ashes too, but still kept us warm.

My gorgeous poncho

It makes much more sense to me to hold this celebration at midwinter rather than in December; the symbols all make sense now.
Have a happy Yule everyone.

Some more unusual vegetable beds made from old pallets

Yes...I did it again; I saw some old junk laying around and thought "That would make a really good garden bed"

This time it was an old pallet. My partner installs stand alone solar systems so he occasionally brings home a pallet that has been used to transport panels or batteries. They are usually used as fire starters (being made of pine they burn fast and hot).

I had cleaned out the trailer bed ready to be planted with more green pick for salads and stir fries, and was thinking I need more space for lettuce and baby spinach when I wandered past the 'to burn' pile and saw the pallet.

I propped it up with a stack of old tyres to be level with the trailer bed.

Lined the bottom and up the sides with black plastic from the 'take to the dump please' pile and stapled  it in place. 

Filed the lot up with soil, potting mix and compost and poked a lot of holes in the bottom. There it is; complete with bird cage covers to keep the chooks out of the lettuce.

The trailer bed is all cleared and ready for planting too.

The pallet bed is very shallow (about 10 cm) so it will be hard to grow anything but lettuce or baby spinach in it, but if the soil is rich enough and it doesn't dry out it should do the job.

Being made out of pine the whole thing will only last a year or two, but it re-uses something from my rubbish pile and makes a useful short term bed so I'm happy.

Using pallets for gardens isn't really unknown; I found these examples on the internet.

I guess I will be using more of the old pallets that make it home from now on.

What do you upcycle at your place?

From fleece to toe bag and all stops in between - the journey so far

A colourful pile of my home spun wool.

While I'm knitting the tote bag, I thought I would link all the posts in this series so far to one page. That way you can read it all together.

Just click the links below to read the entire story.

Part One 

Part two

Part three

Part four

From fleece to tote bag and all stops in between - part four

Now I have some dyed skeins of homespun wool to knit with, its time to cast on and start.

When I have an order for bags I ask the client some questions;
What bag shape?
What colours?
What stitch pattern?

In this case, my client has chosen the petite bag, in black and rainbow colours with the Asthore stitch pattern. So I dug out my bag of reclaimed embroidery wool and saved scraps of pure wool and spliced them together using the Russian join to make two rainbow balls of wool.

My reclaimed scrap wool pile.

Joined together to make...

Huge balls of rainbow wool

Now I have everything I need; black homespun, reclaimed rainbow, circular needles and coffee. Away we go.

My favourite bag pattern of the moment is the petite felted bag.

I begin by casting on eight stitches (four on each needle) using a 'figure 8 cast on'

I then knit the base of my bag by increasing stitches every second row., as indicated by the pattern.
Once the base is big enough I choose a slip stitch pattern and start knitting.
So far I have used these slip stitch patterns to make bags;
Asthore
Dog's tooth cross
Yin Yang
Fretted mosaic

The base of my bag is started. Eight stitches on each side have been increased to twelve.

The entire base is done; a total of 154 stitches. I am using the Asthore pattern so I needed to add a few stitches to make the number a multiple of 16 (Asthore is a 16 stitch pattern).

And the colour knitting begins. 

The pattern is beginning to emerge.

This is the quickest part of making felted bags, I can take my knitting anywhere and fill in free moments and I can settle down to a quiet evening watching a movie while I knit too.

Next step; felting. Stay tuned.

Note; I do apologise for my photography, most of the photos are taken in the evening with my phone so they don't show true colour and are not well focused.