Elusive elastic

Unable to find the elastic I know is lurking somewhere around the house, I’ve been running around to drugstores, quilt and embroidery stores, for two days.  Everyone has Velcro but regular elastic is much harder to find.

However, Gala Fabrics came to the rescue and instead of having to buy a vast quantity in a plastic blister pack, they cut off the yardage I needed and packed it in this precious repurposed sewing pattern!

Young Sprout was in tow, behaving beautifully considering he had just missed a chance to go on the bouncy castle because the volunteers were stopping for lunch, so I didn’t push my luck by browsing their fabric sale although some bright red paisley is calling my name!

a neeeeeeewwwww low?

I’m as enthusiastic about Dumpster diving as the next person and I’ve had some wondrous finds.  But this is one I’m leaving behind…

and considering we live in a rental complex, some do it yourselfish neighbour or unscrupulous contractor had to lug it in from the street and across the parking lot so our fellow tenants and I get to pay the tipping fee.  And our hardworking apartment manager gets to deal with it.  Tacky, tacky, tacky.

Baraka!

Found two abandoned chairs with nothing wrong with them that couldn’t be fixed with black Sharpie marker and a generous spraying with Fabreze.  They were made in California and I’m guessing date from the mid-80s.  Second-hand and thrift stores feel they can’t sell metal frame chairs.  Our other chairs were actually traded with a thrift store.  We were dropping off donations and needed chairs, and the staff said that they wouldn’t be able to sell the chairs, so they let us have them.  And those chairs only needed a quick spray with household cleaner.

As you can see, this is before.

Here is the after photo, they now look (and smell!) way more presentable.

and last a close up showing how I disguised the frayed piping.

I like them because they are comfortable and feel solid when you sit on them.  Plus more chairs mean you can have more people over without having to drag office chairs out.  I’m contemplating making coordinated tie-on seat pads to pull the look more together.

Parting is such sweet sorrow …

… especially when it comes to one’s fabric stash!

Our guild is having its annual garage sale next week so I bravely went through my bins and pulled out fabric I could sell to fellow addicts quilters.  No prizes for guessing what I’ll do with all that money.

After bagging and pricing my pile, these are the ones that upon mature consideration I decided I just am not yet ready to part with.  Actually there’s even a few more because just yesterday I bought Susan Teece’s Roses and Windows pattern and decided to keep some pink and burgundy fabric until I’ve made the roses.  After all it is an annual sale.  Susan did a workshop on this in May but with traveling to Phoenix it wasn’t possible for me to attend.

There’s a rationale of sorts behind my other keep choices in the photo.  The red is what I used to screen print the animal faces and with matching fabric the possibilities of making a jacket are that much easier.

The black and white bears and the green turtles are in honour of my preliterate assistant and partner in creativity.  The green bandana on the right is a Lily Pulitzer Race for the Cure design, and it occurred to me that this might be useful for a workshop Susan Purney Mark is developing for spring.  And the other fabrics suddenly presented more possibilities than I had seen as I pulled them from their bins.

Does anyone else go through these gyrations?  It boggles my mind that I supposedly cleaned out my stash before moving here, sold some to Fabric Traders, and STILL have a pile to go!

 

 

I’ve been slimed, part 3

Well, my faith in Method is somewhat restored, as it seems they discontinued some of the less popular fragrances in the U.S.  However Canadians may have to be content with cross border shopping or buying from Amazon.  Retail therapy here is in need of therapy!

I’ve been slimed, part 2

Found this in my inbox this morning, it looks to me like a computer generated reply:

Hey there, it’s us, the method folks… thanks for getting in touch! Your question has been received, and you should expect a response from us within 48 hours.

Except the subject line of the email was Aroma Bills (not pills) and I definitely wrote pills in my message.  Talk about a Freudian slip!

Watch this space for updates.

I’ve been slimed …

… well, greenwashed really, but slimed sounds better.

I trusted the Method company to have concern for the environment and put out good household cleaning products at a premium price.   Up to now I’ve been happy with the products I’ve tried but now I’m ticked.

They have discontinued their Aroma Pills, just months after I paid a premium price for the system.  I liked that the scents are subtle, unlike some other companies whose products hit you over the head with Rose Garden, Summer Meadow or Ocean Breeze.

This is just typical corporate duplicity!  It’s all very well for the bottom of the box to say “recycle. always” but now the unit itself is going to end up in the landfill as soon as the supply of pill refills I found on clearance is exhausted, and I’ll be shelling out more money for some other transient product.  How rude!

This definitely gives me pause to look around for locally produced environmentally sound household products.  Several companies were at the  Island Organics Festival.

Stay tuned, as I’m emailing a link to this post to Method.  We’ll see if they have the gumption to respond.

Recognition at Last :-)

It’s so cool that someone was sweet enough to grab me a chair AND make a label out of repurposed organic cotton!  It was especially cool because the label was made and waiting when I arrived at the Organic Islands festival this morning.  This is going to be attached to my office chair.

About 40 people have designed blocks for the community quilt, which is plenty to make a decent sized quilt that can be displayed next year.  Ideas for the next one are already percolating away … and I had a really great time. There was a really good vibe and the children were so positive and creative.

It’s such fun to watch small children dip their paintbrush into every colour and then splash away.  The organic cotton jersey used for the prayer flags was great because unlike paper it doesn’t disintegrate no matter how loaded with paint it is.  Children were encouraged to hang them up to dry and come back later to take them home, but a lot were left at the end of the day.

The flag above is by me, using very liquid acrylic paint.  The colours almost remind me of Jacquard Setacolor, but these blended better.

Organic Islands Festival

The Organic Islands Festival is Canada’s largest outdoors green festival.  I volunteered at the EcoArt station in the Children’s Village encouraging children (and adults too for that matter!) to create quilt squares that the Victoria Quilters’ Guild will be making into a large scale quilt.  Other activities including painting prayer flags on organic cotton to express children’s wishes for the Earth, and free facepainting.  As you can see in the top photo, the tables were specially made with reclaimed wood to be kid height and show environmental themes.

EARLY MORNING BONUS:  on the way to Glendale Gardens we saw two deer crossing the road!

Another unexpected pattern

Returning from Phoenix, it was refreshing to see this vertical green wall at the airport in Vancouver. The desert is beautiful but a week of the prevailing attitude of doing very little about the environment really got to me.

Two hundred years from now people will look at us and be so angry at the legacy we are leaving.  I feel rage at the slave trade that has left us with a legacy of racism and waste of human potential, but people were caught up in a system that made it easy to do the wrong thing.

Okay, I’ll climb off my soapbox now …