Unstuffed: Gifts and crafts

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Gifts and crafts

I love antique and vintage linens and have a slowly growing collection of napkins and handkerchiefs that I use on a daily basis instead of paper towels and tissues. I also think linens make a lovely gift, so I thought these pretty napkins along with this decorative mirror would make a nice gift for a friend's birthday. Both the napkins and the mirror are not new, but I do hope they enjoy their new home.

I also have a growing supply of boxes, tissue and wrapping paper that I save and reuse. Since I don't have very much storage space I was happy to have a reason to dip into my supplies. I like to make my own cards, but I also have a good store of second hand cards. Thrift shops are great places to look for cards that have never been used.

I finished another recycled materials craft project this week. Even though I didn't follow the pattern, just making things up as I went along for this plastic bag crochet clothespin bag, I did take this woman's great work as the inspiration and guideline. I'm really happy with the way it turned out and I can't wait to use it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Good on you for giving a second hand gift. I find that all my good intentions re making ethical and environmentally friendly choices often go out the window when buying gifts for others. I worry that may just think my gift is 'cheap' rather than green or ethical. Not any more. I am giving only gifts made from recycled materials. Maybe i'll aslo keep an eye out for great second hand gifts as well.
Cheers,
Tricia; February 22, 2009 at 7:33 PM
Amber said...: I also worried that second hand or handmade gifts might be considered cheap, but then I thought, does that mean then that what makes a 'good' gift is its newness, how expensive it is or what store it comes from? What about the thought that goes into a gift, the intention behind it, the time taken to pick out or make something that you think the person will like? Do these no longer matter? If I give a second hand or handmade gift that I think someone will really like and have a use for, is it any less acceptable as a gift than something that is new? I decided that a 'yes' answer to that question wasn't acceptable to me, so I decided 'cheap stigma' be damned, I'm giving second hand/handmade gifts!; February 23, 2009 at 12:39 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali