Monday 31 August 2015

Wood you, could you?


Reduce, reuse, recycle.  The "Green" mantra these days.  Well, I love being able to avoid unecessary  waste heading off to landfill.  Trying to be mindful and less wasteful, I try to see the possibility in normal end-of-use throw away items.  Recently I made enough cleaning clothes out of an old threadbare winter sheet.  Long past it's use-by date, with a threadbare middle where bottoms lie, tossing and turning the night away, week after month after year!  Usually, sheets maintain their fluffy integrity all around the sides, so I cut the sheet in intervals, tore them into strips and sewed them into user-friendly-sized cleaning clothes.  If you use 3 or 4 layers, the cloths are padded and extra strong.   I even managed to make a couple for each of my kids to use in their flats.  These flannel winter-sheet cloths make for excellent cleaning and leave very little (if any) lint on windows, kitchen and bathroom surfaces or benchtops.  They are soft and do not scratch delicate surfaces.  
Sold?  Next time you're about to throw away that old sheet, think again - a couple of year's supply of cleaning cloths lie in them thar unused sides!! 
Great little soft housekeeping helpers at hand.

Another fun scrap crafting project is to buy hemp string (I buy mine from the $2 shop).  Hemp is a rough string and when knitted into a 24 stitch square, it makes an excellent dish cloth.  The roughness of the finished knitting makes it ideal for scrubbing plates, pots, dirty cutlery etc. needing a scrubbing brush or extra muscle power.


Down in the garden shed, I have been a busy little bee, enjoying using the cedar scraps which Mike collects for kindling.  I sort through them first and squirrel away pieces for my little woodwork projects.  Made a few items and working on another scarecrow at the moment (Josephine, our old one, needs a mate).

Little Bay Leaf storage box.

I tried to copy a Star of David design which a helpxchanger, Marcus Sykora, made us, many, many years ago.  I added a little scrap focal point from an aluminium piece of a "V" can I picked up on the road.
A recipe book holder

Holder with recipe book.
A wooden coddling moth pheromone trap, now's the time to hang it, just before bud burst (well, I may be a little early, hopeful really) to monitor the moths and snag some of the lusty males.  It's made from scraps - an old sheet of perspex, blind slats, old curtain wire and voila!  Should do the job nicely.  It pays to change the pheromone plugs after 5 weeks (available from farm supplies).

Coddling Moth Pheromone trap

On a wet and dull day, non-stop raining, I have been stuck inside making sweet treats today, so I shall put on my raincoat and head to the garden shed to continue to make Josephine's buddy.  Sweet!

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