Green Options

Spring is right around the corner - the perfect time to refresh your home with a few new, eco-friendly items. Started by indie Canadian design blogger Jan, Poppytalk Handmade is like an online farmer’s market for handmade goodies (why didn’t we think of that!?).

As luck would have it, this month’s theme for the showcase is all about green:

Here we are, entering our 6th month at poppytalk handmade and we can’t think of a better way to ring it in than as an eco-themed market! As each market starts up, there’s always a bustle going on, and the anticipation to see everyone’s table come to life is my favorite part! We are thrilled to showcase this emerging talent with green spirits!

After the immense enjoyment I got from Gaia Girls - Enter the Earth, I had some high expectations for the second book in the Gaia Girls series Way of Water. I’m happy to say that author Lee Welles delivered yet again!

With the first tome based around the element of earth, the second tome is all about water (as the title suggests). Miho’s scientist parents were lost at sea and she now has to move to Japan to live with her uncle. Though she speaks no Japanese and has never met her uncle, she has no other choice but to move in with her only living relative.

While visiting the beach house of her grandparents (who have already passed on), Miho meets the already infamous otter, Gaia. Miho is quickly swept up in the excitement of being able to talk to all the creatures of the sea and makes friends with a large group of dolphins. Of course, her adult uncle thinks she is nuts and simply can’t follow orders when he tells her to be home at a certain time and she continues to come home dripping wet.

Organic yarns have been the majority of the fibers featured in our Yearn-Worthy Yarns series thus far. For this week’s installment, we are covering another vital element of green living and sustainable production - fair trade.

Wikipedia explains fair trade quite clearly as “an organized social movement and market-based approach to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production.” Based in Oneonta, New York, the Da’vida Fair Trade Store sells its own line of hand painted and hand spun yarns made from alpaca, wool and yak fibers.

Painted by Lisa Meriam, a sheep farmer who lives in upstate New York, Da’vida’s collection of yarns come uncolored from Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru.

Looking to add some spice to your Spring wardrobe? Need a new creative project to work on? We introduced you to Burda Style during the early days of our blog. Now its time to share the details for their first mini-challenge for all the sewers out there.

How do you enter? All you have to do is create your own version of Burda’s Sidonie skirt pattern. “This simple A-line mini skirt is a quick project ideal for your perfect little basic skirt that has been missing in your closet. Even better, you can use it as a base for your own designs and develop it further,” says the Burda Style website.

How long does the contest last? What do you win? Keep reading for the rest of the details, straight from Burda Style’s news blog.

Looking for some extra inspiration? Check out Burda’s own variation to get your own creative juices flowing.

Finding fiction to enjoy has aways been a challenge for me. Thankfully, that issue didn’t arise while I was reading the first book of Lee Welles’ Gaia Girls series titled Enter the Earth. (Full disclosure: Lee Welles writes for this blog, but I was assigned to review her books before she came on board.) The premise of her series, listed as for ages 9 and up, is as follows:

What would you do if you could hear the Earth asking for help? In the Gaia Girls book series, that is what happens to four girls, each from a different region of the world. They are approached by Gaia, the living organism of the Earth. Each is endowed with powers over one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. They must learn to use their powers to help Gaia survive the effects of modern humanity.

The first book centers around a girl named Elizabeth Angier and one very eventful summer at her family farm in New York state. She and the family’s undeniably lovable dog Maizey take on a big business factory farming operation that is trying to buy up all the farms in her town. On top of that, her best friend is moving not only out of town but out of state to Florida. Just as her troubles start to reach their boiling point, Elizabeth is greeted by an eager otter named Gaia who will change her world forever.

Unless you live a Compact-like lifestyle, you are going to be shopping on a somewhat regular basis. Whether it be home improvements, gifts, furnishings, crafts, gardening, fashions, babies, sports, pets or anything else you have going on, there is a green option to be found.

But where do you buy from? I’m all for promoting local businesses and buying from small stores right in your own town. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, you may have little to no options in that category. The easiest thing to do is log on to the internet (and you already have since you are reading this) and partake in the massive variety it has to offer.

After the runaway success with their first thepurplebook: the definitive guide to exceptional online shopping in 2000, authors Hillary Mendelsohn and Ian Anderson have released a number of specialized editions. Hitting book shelves in January 2008, thepurplebook Green: an eco-friendly online shopping guide is the latest of their incarnations.

Whether you’re new to the eco-lifestyle or so sustainably settled that you have a composting toilet and solar panels, thepurplebook Green Edition has something to offer everyone. Though the book is about shopping, it continually reminds readers to reuse what they already have. “The greenest thing you can do is to extend the lifespan of the products you already own,” says Hillary in the book’s introduction. “When it comes to shopping, it’s usually a matter of buying eco-friendly versions of the same products you already use.”

It’s not often that I write about a specific yarn instead of a whole company’s collective offerings. Rare as it is, I couldn’t resist when it comes to Knit One, Crochet Too’s 2nd Time Cotton yarn.

I first heard about 2nd Time Cotton in Knit 1 Magazine’s first green issue (Summer 2007), which features the yarn in a few of its different projects. Though KOCT has a few other pseudo-sustainable yarns (Wick is made with 53% soy and BabyBoo with 45% bamboo), their 2nd Time Cotton is inherently “green” because of its recycled nature.

How is it recycled? Second Time Cotton is made from cotton fibers that are textile factory scraps and leftovers from their usual operations here in the United States.

In the picture to the left, you’ll see their solid-color 2nd Time Cotton in Artichoke. Helene from Knit One, Crochet Too was nice enough to send me a hank of this swank fiber. Available in 12 solid and 11 striped colorways, 2nd Time Cotton does contain 25% acrylic, which is “added for fiber stability.”

OK, so it is not 100% eco-friendly, but hey, you have to start somewhere … right?

When was the last time you cleaned out your attic? How about your basement? Are there still boxes sitting around from when you first moved in years ago?

Under all that dust and clutter, I bet there are some pretty random things lying around your home - you know, in those far reaches that rarely, if ever, see the light of day or the end of a Swiffer.

From VHS tapes and phone books to empty pens and packing peanuts, the readers of ReadyMade Magazine have found new uses for once useless items via the MacGyver Challenge.

In each issue, the editors choose a specific item for readers to find new uses for. The winning project from a previous issue is also featured, along with directions on how to make it yourself. In the current issue (#33), two ladies from Wisconsin won the broken umbrella challenge by making a magazine rack. Runner-up projects are now featured online; this item’s secondary ideas include two dog outfits and a gym-style parachute (now that’s a flashback, huh?).

My boyfriend has a nose like a dog. Because of this, I’ve become accustomed to not wearing perfume and opening the bathroom window after I apply scented lotions. When it comes to cleaning, whether it be the kitchen counters or our weekly two loads of laundry, I have to be sure to use all natural scents that won’t make him dizzy. You could say that his nose is the same as a person with sensitive skin.

When I read the “Making Sense of Scents” feature article (page 107) in this month’s Body+Soul, I identified with it right away. As a child, I used to have terrible skin reactions when my mother would use anything other than Tide laundry detergent and Downy softener. Though I am not sure if it had anything to do with the scents in the products, reading that “skin allergies are the most common and proven adverse reactions to synthetic fragrances” sure did get me thinking.

Writer Frances Lefkowitz provides a great amount of data to back up the fact that all these unnatural smells infiltrating our senses are having nothing but negative effects. Of course, no article of this kind would be good without some helpful suggestions to avoid these chemicals, and those are provided thoroughly.

One major effect that scents can have on a human is altering emotions and moods.

Pop corn, corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn chips, corn flakes … and yarn?

Admittedly, when I think of the hearty, diverse vegetable we know as corn (maize to the Native Americans who received the seeds from tribes in what is now Mexico), I don’t usually think of making sweaters and purses.

Alabama-based Kollage Yarns is looking to change that food-focused perception with not one, but two 100% corn yarns.

The first of their two corn-based yarns is called Corntastic (my kinda word!)