Moulding Mixture

Another one of the more curious products we found in our favourite shop that we call 'The Last Order'. At least on a quick Google search I couldn't find any place where you can buy the stuff on line.

The pack looks old but it hasn't even been opened and the contents feel soft so I'm sure it's all in perfect condition. I've no idea yet what I'm going to make with it, but this is just one more proof even specialized craft shops are places I don't need. And I don't even want to start about the piles of half full paint cans, glue bottles etc. I've collected.

More Curb Found Craft Fair Solutions

This is a follow-up on my post of June last year. If you want you can take a look back and see the improvements!

I had another one in between in Octobre, but that was a disaster because of the strong wind that day. The silk cover sheets I finally found were too light and together with a lot of my smaller items like the flower brooches were blown from the table! Even after pinning everything down on the wood I couldn't walk away for a second.

Last month I had two Christmas fairs in my home town, Amsterdam. I don't know if it was the Christmas spirit or the different attitide of the big city folks, but for the first time in my craft fair history I sold at a profit. Maybe it was a bit of both, but nine out of ten people were clearly buying for themselves.

One thing that may have helped a little bit too was a better set-up of my table. Because both markets were very close to home I could carry all my stuff by bicycle in two hauls and so I could take more and better display stuff.

First of all I had a really good cover sheet. This one is in one piece and not too heavy, but not too light as well. When I went through my boxes I found a white curtain that measures about 4 by 1,5 meters, the perfect size for a market booth, though the stalls were a bit shorter than the usual 4 meters on this market. I had even forgotten I had it and I also can't remember when and where I found it. And though it's a bit bulky and heavy to carry, I think I may keep this one and even drag it with me in the train for a future market out of town.



With a neatly hemmed piece of finer cloth from a trashed pull up curtain I made a wind proof display for my flower brooches. Can you see it flapping in the wind? And that was only half the wind force as in Octobre. Only the second day I hung it to the side (first picture) as it was blocking my view of my visitors' faces a bit. It's also very handy for transportation and setting up, as I just keep the brooches pinned on and roll it up. It saves a lot of packing and unpacking, so this one is also a keeper too, even for markets out of town.

In June I showed the display board that I made to fit exactly in my suitcase. This time I had to lay it almost flat on the table because it was to light to stand up in the breeze. If you look close you can see it in the photos before the above paragraph.

But I still had one of the same boards in its original size and covered it in a pretty trashed piece of silk fabric (same I used in Octobre for my table). Unfortunately it's too large to bring with me out of town, but here I think it really helped to draw attention to my crocheted jewelry and dressed earrings.

I sold three pairs of them.

For one time I didn't have to bring that ugly plastic make-up mirror (again, see June) and took a pretty one that normally hangs in my kitchen. The mirror leans against a cardboard box that I used for transportation and covered in the same purple silk as the display board and serves as a rise for my tea cozies on the table.



When I first saw it on the curb I thought it was cheap kitsch, but I like a bit of fun kitsch anyway, then at home, looking at the back I found it was actually a handmade item, and who knows how old!

Here's that display hand I talked about in 'A Dress Dummy'. Even not yet repainted it helped to draw attention to my crocheted wrist bands and I sold almost all my broader models, including the orange rag cuff I showed in my previous post and this dark blue one. And just like this red one below, it's completely made of discarded clothing, including the buttons.



Perhaps you thought my post about the rescued lunch bags was a bit funny. But here's how I used them to pack up the products for my customers.

Last but not least: carefully tied on top of a box I even managed to bring a small fold-up stool. I found this one in a dumpster near a renovation site. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of my loaded bike...

Winners Fall Contest

Sorry it took so long to come back on this. But first there were so few replies to my Fall Contest that it was useless to make a draw. Then after some rallying on the message boards I had a handfull more, but found myself already up to my neck in making Christmas gifts and preparing for the upcoming Christmas craft fairs.

The answer to the question was ten. On the bottom, though not clearly visible, but it's just logic to me, there are four. Second floor there are two next to the box. Third floor two are clearly visible, and as said, one hidden behind the monkey makes three. Then there's one more on top, though you see only half of it. Was this difficult? I didn't think so.

However again there was only one correct answer and again (third time!) is was Mary (m/mi) from the HGTV boards. I don't know if it's correct to 'let' her win again, but I excluded her last time.

So I think this clever girl deserves to receive her favourite item from my shop. The funny thing is that this cute necklace is actually a curb found item too, but I fixed the closure so that's a tiny little bit of me in there.

For the second prize I made a fair draw from the other participants, no matter what your answers were. And the name I drew was: Hybrid Hopes who found me through the GetCrafty forum. The cat booklet will go to Portland. Here's her blog: http://hybridhopes.blogspot.com/, a fun blog about crafting and decorating.

To thank the others for their effort I'll mention all their sites or blogs if they have one:

My good friend Nate, who runs a great photography website with his family: http://www.vla.com/fpstrong/

See Nitab43's (HGTV) craft projects here: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/559593567xiybuL

Drema2 (HGTV) didn't get the idea of the contest somehow, but here's to thank for taking an interest anyway:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/suddendrema/

A special thanks to Tisme (HGTV). This is her quilting and crafting blog: http://tismeisme.blogspot.com/ But she also happened to be my Christmas gift exchange buddy on the board and she shows her gift from me here!: http://tismeisme.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-purse.html

Sherryknit (HGTV) stole my heart with a post about recycled yarn on her knitting and crochet blog: http://fortheloveofyarn-blog.blogspot.com/ Read the post here: http://fortheloveofyarn-blog.blogspot.com/2008/11/recycle-yarn-make-centre-pull-ball-of.html

Last: thanks Fuzzbugjr (also HGTV), but she has no online photo album or blog to share with us.

Just one more thing. At one point the second prize winner of my Barbie contest (the curb found scarf) offered to send me some crochet hooks totally for free, when I mentioned on the HGTV-boards I needed those for my recycled T-shirt projects. But I never even realized this was the same person until they arrived in the mail and I recognized the return address! Sarisue, thanks so much again and this is just one more reason to continue these contests. No matter how tiny the groups of participants are, there's alway something nice coming from it! Though next up, somewhere in January, there will be just a simple giveaway. Keep checking!

Pouch crocheted with fabric strips from a trashed T-shirt, zipper from a trashed pair of jeans.
And here's a cuff, using the closure from a trashed winter coat! I already sold this one at my last craft fair, but I'm planning to make some more.

Alley Roses

Last week I had a custom request from a buyer on Etsy, for a flower brooch in a different colour than I had available in my shop.

She didn't have one specific colour in mind and just wanted something not too flashy that would match her brown coat, but one she mentioned was ochre.

To get to that I finally frogged the colourful stripy jumper I showed in my post about free recycled yarn.

As I ended up with a whole palet of colours I decided to make small array for my customer too choose from. Not completely to my surprise, she chose the bright red one with the black bead. Now these photos are horrible but I had to take them inside by winterlight, before work, as I wanted to show the results quickly.

Today I had more time and wanted to see how my new dress dummy could be of help to nicely picture the leftover brooches. You don't see much of the dummy itself, but the nice thing is that I can place it by the window and turn it to catch as much possible light and still be myself in a good position to take the photo. And now I can finally drape that lovely jacket I found on a body, so you don't see the inside of it on the picture.

Also the scarf is a curb find.

I didn't make a lot of money on my order, but in the end it cost me next to nothing and hopefully the new pictures will help to sell the rest. I had fun responding to the request and I collected a new very happy buyer's review in my shop. Feel free to take a look if you want to see more crocheted 'alley roses'.

A Dress Dummy!!

I'm not a dress maker, but being a textile crafter I do reconstruct clothing sometimes and I have knit/crocheted garments in the past. So a real dress dummy is something I've wanted for ages, but not something I'd spend money on.

In the past I already showed the items I had to make do with so far, a cardboard male shopwindow dummy and a half body lingerie dummy. But those were only good for displaying. But nevertheless at the time when the BF found them on Monday morning errands I was happy enough.

But some two weeks ago he had a bigger surprise for me. These days he sometimes goes for an extra late night excursion after our usual Sunday evening walk. Already asleep I never even heard him leaving. So what a thrill when he came downstairs the next morning and sort of casually said: Oh, found this for you last night... Ah, my eyes popped, my mouth fell open... Couldn't have been happier with expensive jewelry.

This dress dummy was thrown out because the foot is broken. I can fix it, but for the time being she fits right on top of the pair of legs (this is out of proportion of course, the whole thing has double hips now) from a shopwindow dummy I found last summer. That's funny because I know they used this as a sort of decorative stand (they fitted a flat piece of plastic on top) in a bar where we went a couple of times years ago and it was in the trash right in front of it. I also found one of her hands, painted in the same ugly way. Until all's fixed or repainted they're waiting in the messy corner in my workroom, so sorry for the messy picture. Soon I hope to be able to show some either curb found or hand made garments on both the dummy and the legs!

Tulip Oscar

As I was sorting out my bulbs (see previous post) - unfortunately quite a lot were bad, so I was left with about half the amount, but still a lot - I found a piece of paper in the bucket that read: 500 bulbs, tulip Oscar. So now knowing what they are I dicided not to plant them in my lawn (Sher) as I will have to dig them up again, but I did put some alongside.

Then I quickly Googled tulip Oscar to find this gorgious deep bright red flower! Maybe a bit traditional, but I love it. I also found some information and it turns out to be one of the strongest tulips around, it takes bad weather and thrives in both sun and shade. Just perfect for an Amsterdam garden. Now hopefully the strength of this variety also means these old bulbs will still push up and flower. We'll see!

A Bucket Of Bulbs

It's bulb planting time, and some two weeks ago the trash offered me this very timely gift. And as you can see, when I say bucket I don't mean a yoghurt pot sized bucket (that's what my harvest from my tulips from last year fits in... see here). This is a 20 or more liter container and really filled from the bottom to the brim with... well, I'm not sure what type they are, but because of their size my guess is daffodils. They were waiting for me only a block away in the Wednesday trash and of course this report will be continued next spring when they will flower.

Now this amount is even too big for my small garden, but I plan to put them in the public patch behind the garden fence as well, and as I suspect they maybe older than this year's harvest and may not come up all, I'm not afraid to put them all over. Can't wait for spring now!

Come Curb Shopping With Me

First this: My Fall Guessing Contest is still open! Click HERE to read more.

I live in an old but very green part of Amsterdam, very close to the historic center, but evenly close to parks and nature, almost near the edge of our town. This is just a very nice walking lane next to a playground around the corner from my block. Now, first I want to tell you something about the trash system in my neighbourhood.

Across the road at the end of my street, is a fairly new group of blocks that were built around ten years ago. They call it the eco-friendly neighbourhood because in between the blocks no cars are allowed. There are only footpaths and lots of green. Around it are underground trash collection points where people can dump their bags in anytime, so they don't have to wait for trash night, next to the more traditional containers for paper and glass.
Over time, when more old buildings were torn down and replaced by new luxury apartment blocks, more of the underground collection points were placed in other parts of my neighbourhood, provided there's enough place for them. But there will always be enough traditional collection points that can only be used on trash night in the older narrower streets. These are simply blue iron poles placed around 50 meters apart in every street where people can leave all bags and bulk trash. They make the work of the trash men a bit easier as they don't have to stop in front of each door or go look behind parked cars. Even though you'd think the underground containers take most trash from the sight of pickers, it's unbelievable what collects around them on trash night. Often they're full by then, but on trash night people place everything that doesn't pass through the openings, like bulk trash but also boxes with small goods, around them. In fact they've proved to provide us with some of our best finds.

Now let me take you outside with me and take you on a tour to show you some of our favourite shopping spots. In daytime that is, because my camera is useless in the dusk and who wants to see piles of trash anyway?

This is usually the first street we take. It's alongside the 'Eco-'hood' as it's generally called. In the middle, where you see the cyclist is the first group of underground paper, glass and other waste containers. It's right there we found our fantastic couch. It's also a first stop because it's where we bring our own waste paper and glass.

After a second collection point further on we turn right into the footpaths between the blocks and come back this way. As the houses were built on the premises of the old water company, you can still see the watertower (that 'spaceship' in the back) and some of the old 19th century industrial buildings (these are now official historic monuments), now turned into a restaurant, a tv-studio and theater.

We then find this collection point to our right. Here you get a better view of what the containers look like. The 'chimneys' on top are used to pull the containers up from the ground. Once they hang in the right position over the truck the bottom opens and the contents fall into it. It works the same for the glass and paper bins. They look the same, only have different openings. The chairs are not supposed to be there as it's Saturday afternoon and trash night is Sunday, but I take it someone is hoping they will be found by someone before the trash van passes.

From there we have various routes through the old streets around my own house with the traditional collection points, to arrive here at the flower shop. There are 'undergrounds' to left, not on the picture, that have been put there more recently, less than two years ago I think. If you want to see some of the gifts of the flower shop itself, take a look here. We found our dresser in the street straight up from the left of this block, which we go up and down.

This bin is across the street and proves that on a Sunday afternoon it is already filled to the brim.

We then turn left past the shop to arrive at this recently re-furnished square. There are one collector for glass, one for paper and two for other waste. It looks really neat now, but believe me in a couple of hours it's an enormous mess. The paper container is always full, so countless bags full of magazines and newspapers are placed next to them. Objects like lamps, pottery etc. could pass through the openings of the waste collectors, but people always put them in boxes next to it. Then there's always a lot of bulk trash; I guess the wide space invites people from across the street and more far to bring it here instead of placing in on their own narrow curb. By the time we arrive often other pickers have gone through it all and don't place items they don't want back in the boxes. Sometimes clothing is lying all about, being pulled out of (unsealed) bags. Plus there are the stinking bags of regular kitchen waste if those collectors are full as well. And even those are being cut open sometimes! I'm not very proud of it and we never stay too long here. I've found some interesting magazines and take a quick peek in the boxes for kitchen stuff, I've found nice shoes and lamp shades and such. If it jumps in my eye I take clothing for recycling. But I don't go rummaging through the dirt, not only is it beyond me, I just don't want to make the mess worse! But is here we got our television set. We were just crossing the road when we saw a man coming out of the building in front carrying it in his arms!

From there on it's back home via various routes. All in all it's been a walk of about three quarters of an hour, only if we linger or find something great that I have to go pick up a cart for it takes up to an hour and we hardly ever go more far. I sometimes still can't believe how much we find in such a small area!

If you enjoyed this post you may also be interested to read this old post about my house.

Lunch Bags

What's so special about a pack of lunch bags to even blog about? Nothing. But:

- Well, I blog about anything I find in the trash that I think is not trash. This product is complete and even still sealed and clean, so definitely not trash, no matter how cheap or futile.
- I found them in Amsterdam, Holland, that is Europe! How does a USA manufactured product end up on the curb here? Because I wouldn't know where to buy this over here. Besides, any paper lunch bags are nowhere to be found in my country. We use plastic 'boterhamzakjes' or 'sacs a sandwich' as is printed on the box you buy them in.

So someone, on vacation or a business trip, flies from Holland to the US, buys paper lunch bags (maybe because we don't have them over here, I can follow it until there), drags them home, but then never uses them and (years later I presume) trashes them. I think that's amazing. Or ridiculous!

Now if you think this means I'll bring 50 lunches to work in paper instead of plastic you're wrong. Because I've recycled plastic bread bags for that for years and I won't change that. I use one bag (they're that strong) for at least a week (just shake out the crumbs and it's good for another day), then I still don't throw it away, but use it for cleaning the cat litter box. We use the lump making litter stuff, a day or two of the cats 'production' fits perfectly in one reused bread bag and it keeps the smell from my trash bag and in case I get a hole in that, no harm is done (allows me to use the thinner, cheaper and more eco-friendly trash bags as well).

The paper bags I will take to my next craft fair. With a card stapled on them they will make great and neat looking eco-friendly packaging! Brings me to my craft: if you still want a chance to win an item from my shop or a lovely (curb found) booklet, you can still enter my contest. Previous post or click here.

Cat Accessories And My Fall Contest For Cat Lovers

Sometimes all things fit perfectly together. I haven't posted in a few weeks so it's about time. I've been wanting to show our - with the help of curb finds - self constructed cat furniture for a while.

I still have to present our new cat Pepe, who showed up in our neighbour's garden last March out of nowhere. Not exactly a curb find, but a good find after all. He is the sweetest! I have a new great curb found gift to give away - and it happens to be a lovely booklet for cat lovers. A new season is coming up... So it's the perfect moment for a new guessing contest!

I'm keeping it simple this time: all you have to do is guess the number of scratching poles my BF used in his latest construction (second picture). Next - as usual - go to my Etsy shop and describe what you like. And as before there will be two winners. First prize is any item from my shop up to $10, provided it ships as a flat envelope.

Second prize this lovely booklet with the story of Tobermory and bloggers will be featured. It's unused, so you can still use it as a gift if you like.

Does that sound like fun to you? I sure hope so. You can enter your comments until: THIS CONTEST IS NOW OPEN UNTIL I HAVE ENOUGH RESPONSES TO MAKE A REASONABLE DRAW!!. Make sure I can contact you through your blog or message board account.

Now let me show you our stuff. I don't know if they sell exactly the same constructions in the US, but with mondialization it wouldn't surprise me. These fun play sleeping and scratching constructions are a must for every cat lover, but they are expensive. As it turns out sometimes they are not very strong and fall apart quickly. And people throw the pieces on the street. All we have to do is reconstruct them with the help of some old planks for a strong basis and really strong screws and bolts (the only things we bought). The fun is our structure often changes when we find new additions for it. Cats love that. They also love to get stuff from the street. They hate shop smell. It doesn't tell them anything.

This is the situation about two years ago. That's my fat Cézar on top. A few months ago we found a complete and hardly used piece. At home we soon found out why it was thrown out. Every time a cat jumped from it, it fell over.

So the BF integrated it in the existing piece and now we have this fantastic cat castle.

To make a passage from the balcony to the garden we simply connected two old ceiling beams and made little 'chicken steps' from scrap wood.

Any man (read burglar) trying to reach the balcony this way would immediately break through the connection but for our Pepe here it's strong enough!

Of course I never bought a litter box in my life. As you can read in The Cat Carrier, they come in numbers and so I even had an old one to give away. With one upstairs and one downstairs in great condition we are well provided, but I still see them regularly in the trash. Sometimes I'm tempted when I see one in a fancy colour, but it's not even worth the trouble.

I do own one cat carrier that I bought, because I wanted this model, a top loader for my difficult outdoor cats and it's easily attached to the luggage carrier of my bicycle. But I have two of these wicker carriers (and had and used up more in the past) that were nicely 'handed' for free to me by my neighbours.

One warning: do not bring stuff home from the street that has been used by other cats when you have kittens that haven't been vaccinated yet and clean all plastic items with bleach. Even though you can bring cat's disease with you from anywhere, you can't be too careful!

To end here's a little help for the contest: one of the poles is hidden behind the monkey and you can't see the top plateau. Have fun!

Pottery and Ceramics

Last time I was quite militant, wasn't I? So now for those who prefer to read my blog for that reason, let's go back to showing some of the prettier trash found treasures. I don't want to talk about the pile of ordinary plates, cups, bowls, mugs etc. Apart from what I inherited from my family any addition to my kitchen cabinets comes from the curb. Honest, people throw out complete sets! But here are a few of my 'showpieces':

This crude terracotta jug makes a nice vase. I like it because it's quite probably someones project from a pottery class or so. Despite the crudeness it's well made and beautiful in it's simplicity.

This earthenware piece comes from the trash of on of the few detached houses in my neighbourhood. It's the old lockkeeper's house; the old locks being out of use for years, the keeper's widow was allowed to stay, but recently she moved to a home and in the year previous to that we found all sorts of interesting things there. I can't say how old the vase really is or what it's worth because it has no factory stamp, only the maker's signature, but it is an original hand paint in the tradition of Delft Blue (even though this one is coloured).


Here's a nice bowl that's not old, but certainly handwork and completely intact. I don't know what part of the world this comes from, India, Africa? If anybody knows, let me know!

And isn't this cute? It's only 4.5'' high! A mass produced piece for sure and a copy of old styles, but it's fine porcelain and the paint work is still done by hand. As it's not really my style I put this one up for sale in my Etsy shop, in case you're interested.

Intermezzo

Just philosophizing about trash and recycling a bit. But an important renewed explaining about this blog. Please, please read even if you think it's long... And some of the smaller stories from my life as a curb shopper that I haven't gotten around to make complete posts about that still need to be told.

The curb gives and the curb takes. When I put out old furniture myself it's usually stuff I already had for free and really trash. But somehow it even always finds it's way to a new user. That old school table (my dad was a teacher and he saved an old one and then gave it to me when I moved out) with rusty iron legs was taken practically from my hands by the old iron collector. Probably the same guy took my totally worn out ugly office conference chairs (present from work, I was in the purchase dept. at the time). They were gone within half an hour. And even my great aunt's ugly (though real oak) round table at least was gone in the morning. It's top was stained and had burn marks and I always wanted to give it a paint job or new varnish, but the thing was just to large for my house and after he found his fantastic table even my BF had no use for it anymore.

So yes I admit I'm guilty too of throwing things away... But as said, I'm afraid the thrift shop wouldn't have sold them and I make sure the other scavengers get to see them. I know a lot of people think the same way when they put out large things. It just happens you don't have place for things anymore. Elderly people move to a home and have to down size. The thrift shop will gladly pick the stuff up, but you just decided to give it for free directly to it's new users. OK, I can live with that. Though the thrift shop (GW, SA or whatever) trains people, you may not agree with their policies. It's often the smaller things (sometimes the cheapest plastic stuff) that are obviously really trashed that puzzle me most and prove the stupidest irresponsibility! And that's basically what this blog is all about. You'll find enough examples when you scroll down my posts, but here's some more recent ones to illustrate my point of view. Last week I found an opened bag of clean cat litter stones. Almost full. Well, there may be a sad story behind it, but with hundreds of cat owners in every street, couldn't they find a neighbour who could use it? Or why trash an almost brand new complete dustpan and brush set? Hmm, did they buy a vacuum cleaner? Perhaps they emigrated? Now the BF has a double set, but kept his old one to use on the balcony.

And then the toys. Recently I found more bags full of plush puppets that I'm definitely going to try to sell after washing them, but if their previous owners could have taken that little effort (machine does the job) they could have made other children happy with them. There also were a baby floor puzzle and a large wooden pull cart with blocks. Both neatly packed up in their original packaging, even taped up!. Used, but complete, intact, good and expensive toys, not plastic shit. A school or day care centre would have been so happy with them! They were hidden in plastic shopping bags (not sealed) between real trash, so I took those boxes and placed them visibly in front so hopefully someone took them.

I'm always really happy when I see other people finding great stuff. Like the young couple who found a baby bicycle (you know the real mini bicycle with the side wheels on the back wheel) for their little girl. Judging from their skin colour they were immigrants, maybe even refugees, people who have a hard enough time getting by I guess. I'll never forget the proud smile on daddy's face. Or the time we passed by and didn't take a very clean and new looking matrass, because we already have a great curb found matrass. When we came back from another direction we saw a young man, a student I took it, struggling with it on his bicycle. We saw a couple, probably in their mid fifties, loading up a set of the cutest kitchen cabinets (real wood, not ply or pressed) on a cart. They didn't look like curb shoppers and were a bit startled when we congratulated them with the find, so I just figure they had accidentally stumbled upon the cabinets and took them for a child that just moved out to his or her own flat. Or that young lady (she looked educated and trendy!) with her vase. It was huge and looked like some sort of African primitive art. Beautiful, I might have taken it myself! It must have weighed a ton because she had to go and get her cart for it. I think she too just went outside to place her kitchen trash and stumbled upon it.

I already posted about clothing but I just want to add how really stupid it is to put clothes on the curb (because of the alternatives in my country). Of course, I'm happy when I find them, but especially in my neighbourhood, they only have to walk a bit to drop them of in a special container, placed there for Amnesty International. They are all over the city, but this one is right in the centre of my 'shopping area' which includes no more than six streets or so, so any clothes I find are never more then two streets away from it! In fact I just Googled to find this picture and learned these containers are all over the country.

So this is not the actual one near me, but just an example to give an idea because I don't know if anyone overseas is familiar with the concept. Anyway, you know what I do with curb found clothes I can't use? In there, of course, never back to the curb! And I guess Amnesty would be happy with those plush toys as well.

This morning I went for groceries early and before my local thrift shop (it's on my way) opened. When I passed there I already saw some plastic bags placed on their doorstep. On the way back I saw more goods placed by their back entrance. Good to see people bring their stuff of course, just makes me wonder: are they avoiding contact with the shop personnel?

Brings me to a discussion I found on HGTV (read here). Someone was (rightfully I think) complaining about a GW store refusing her stuff. But it brings two questions in mind. One, of course if thrift shops have such a luxury problem, it says something about how many perfectly good to use goods there are around in the rich countries, where in the same time we just go on producing new stuff! It's crazy!!! What if the crisis hit today and no more furniture, clothing and such were produced? For how many years could we go on without a problem? A lifetime, believe me. Second, as I found the question on the T-2-T board, I was asking myself how come they still have so much stuff to offer to GW and SA... But that's not really criticism, as I don't know the stories behind it. I generally love what these ladies are doing.

It has become a long post without much pictures, so I want to end with one of my own after all. A bit OT, but not completely. Remember that second hand display head I bought through Etsy I showed in the post about the craft market? That lady who sold it to me was so sweet, finding out I'm a yarn girl who likes leftovers, instead of normal parcel fillers she used old yarn she had no use for anymore. It turned out to be 100 % wool bits of tapestry and embroidery yarn, perfect to use in my felted flowers!

Here's one of my favourite results so far. The flower itself is my own yarn (which I bought for next to nothing from a man who kept it for years after his crafty mother deceased), but the leaves are made of hers. For sale in my shop of course. If you like look here for the sale info.

It really has become a long post and I hope I didn't bore anyone (I know myself I tend to scroll down when posts are to long). These were stories I've been wanting to tell for a long time but just never seemed to fit in anywhere. And somehow I felt the need to explain once more why I curb shop. I'm not greedy, it's not about getting free stuff, it's not even about making great benches from bed headboards or shutter boards (no matter how cool that is and I admire these people!!!), but about showing how we overproduce and right now that's more than bad for the Earth. We don't need all that new stuff, it has to stop!!!