Eco-houses, spinning wheels, and family pride

I can't resist. My mum and my sister have been doing some cool things - and I really want to link to them.

My sister and her partner are building a gorgeous eco-house in a suburb near us, and my sister has just a started a series of blogposts that explain some of the issues around the build and the choices they've made. Here's her first post on that - exploring timber treatments.  I for one am a lot more enlightened about the ins and outs of treated wood now!

Meanwhile my mother is marketing her book and website about New Zealand spinning wheels, and was interviewed about it by Granny at http://www.grannygcrafts.com/  You can listen to the podcast there, or visit my mum's website.

Speaking of the passions and pastimes that drive us, I have been bursting to write a series of posts about natural fragrance ... I hope to do it soon!

From the you-have-to-laugh-or-you'd-cry department ...

Or maybe you'll laugh so much you'll cry anyway.

BP Spills Coffee

Into the Wilderness

It's being sold as young adult fiction, but there's no reason why this stunning dystopian novel can't be devoured also by - er - old adults.

I've just started doing children's and YA book reviews every 8 weeks for Your Weekend in the DomPost - yippee. And one of the many pleasures so far has been reading this book by Wellington author Mandy Hager (yep, sister of Nicky Hager). It's the sequel to her award winning The Crossing - although you don't necessarily need to read them in order.

Publishers and booksellers are saying that in these globally worrying times they're doing a roaring trade in dystopian fiction. I have this horrible feeling that we'll see a slew of  mediocre dystopias hitting the market to cynically capitalise on this trend.

But perhaps it's all right as long as there is also still beautiful, thought-provoking and moving work around like Hager's!

I won't say any more until the next reviews are out.

This is unspeakably awesome

 Have you seen it?

http://www.breathingearth.net/

Wow.

Yarn winners announced

This whole giveaway thing has been very exciting and a lot of fun. I haven't won anything, but it's been nice to see some people I know or know of winning stuff! And of course I'm thrilled to bits with all the comments here, and very happy to announce yarn winners!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered, and to SewMamaSew for running it.

My daughter and I printed  the comments out, cut them up, and put them in her accordion case. She scrummaged them around and then drew them ...


Here are the winners:

No 1. Deeply Green
Nikki at Tales of the red headed devil child
(Cue squeak of delight, as I've been a reader of Nikki's blog for a while)

No 2. Stripy and Bouncy
Penelope at Many sudden enthusiasms
(Penelope - you actually won twice - we drew out both your comments! I'll send a bonus!!!)

No 3. Coloured Wool Overdyed
Kelly at Reclaiming Me
(Kelly - I know you don't knit and were going to give the wool away if you won! I hope you can swap it for something good, and I'll put in a small extra thing too.)

No 4. Purply Blue with Bits
Ruby Star at How Bizarre Ruby Star
(It's been nice to find Ruby's blog - and if you read it you will see she has been on a bit of a winning streak lately!!!)

I'll be emailing you guys for postal addresses soon!

I'm also very happy to have got a couple of great swap offers from Cally and Sharon. Definitely would love to take you both up on them.  And Ruth - I'd be a starter for lemon balm ...

8 more hours to go

I'm closing the giveaway at 5pm today New Zealand time, and first thing tomorrow, my daughter and I will do the draw.

Handspun yarn giveaway

Okay, here goes with the SewMamaSew Giveaway. Above are the yarns I'm giving away, all made with a new spinner's ... er, exuberance!

Below - a closer look at each of them and a few details

But first how to enter: Just leave a comment here and say which yarns would be your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices, and tell me how to contact you. If you prefer, you can send your contact details to me at my email - johanna dot knox at gmail.com.

To have a 2nd entry, add that you'd like to hear if and when I get a little shop up and running selling odd bits and pieces. I promise that if this happens, it will just be a one-off email to let you know the details. I won't send you any more spam than that single email.

My daughter will draw the names of the winners randomly out of a hat.

For the moment I'll only post within New Zealand or to Australia.


1. Deeply Green
This is approximately 60 metres or slightly over - spun two ply, mainly from dyed Romney, with some other green things thrown in - like sparkly Angelina.

2. Stripy and Bouncy
Around 75 metres here - in one larger skein and one smaller one. This is white wool plied with blue and pink wool and the odd sparkle of Angelina. I can't remember what breed the white is - but it's extremely bouncy! Most of the thicks and thins were deliberate but I will confess that sometimes the bounce got away from me, and I got some slightly-thicker-than-intendeds. But I still like it.

3. Coloured Wool Overdyed
Two skeins - all up around 270 metres. This was coloured Romney, which I spun and then cold water dyed with some red and a little green. Each skein is about half red and half green. The red is nice, but the green is very faint over the brown of the wool. This photo makes it look a bit shiny, which it isn't really.

4. Purply Blue with Bits
Just 28 metres here, but I especially like this one. It's quite a dark dyed wool, spun with some extra shiny things thrown in.

Have fun with the giveaway! On the left, I've linked to some other NZers doing the Giveaway, and you can find more from all round the world at SewMamaSew.

Giving away handspun soon ...

Dimly I had been thinking, what am I going to do with all this newly spun yarn? I don't knit or crochet. I just love spinning, and I'm building up great purposeless yarn mounds in a corner of the living room. 

Then on Friday I read about the SewMamaSew May Giveaway. So I'm going to participate and give away two or three skeins. If you come back tomorrow or the next day, they'll be up. (The US 17 May being the NZ 18 May...)

It's kinda nerve-wracking. What if no one wants them? What if I can't even give them away? Well, I guess at least I will have tried to find a good home for them.

 I've been searching around on the internet to find other New Zealanders who are joining the May Giveaway. There's Highway Cottage Weblog. And I'd love to hear of any others if you know of them (or are them).

[Update 9.40 am Monday: Here is another NZer doing it - MakeItGiveIt - a really nice idea for a blog too.

9.45 am: Oooh - and another - Cat Taylor Design. This is exciting!

9.51 am: And another! Seaside Siblings. My daughter would love a ragdoll like that .... Oh, and she handily has a link list of several other NZers doing it!]

Oh, and speaking of giving things away - look at this new initiative in Wellington! What an awesome idea. I wonder if they take yarn as well as veges.

New blog for vintage textiles fans

If you love vintage textiles, have a look at Glory Box. They are keen for contributions too ....

Online bartering systems - giving them a whirl and reporting my findings!

My mother-in-law has a huge and prolific fig tree in her backyard, and a couple of weeks ago, she kindly suggested that I come and gather some before the birds got them, and see what I could do with them.

The tree is tall and a lot of the good fruit is at the top, so we tried various methods to get to the bounty, including standing on stools, bending branches towards us with broomsticks, and sending up small children. Eventually we got about a third of the fruits we coveted - about 2 kg of ripe figs, and 1.5 kg of green ones.

 I decided to see if I could sell or swap the figs, using various online bartering systems. I tried out:
* The MyGarden Trader
* The Wellington swap group on Oooby (out of our own back yards)
and
* The global Community Exchange System's Wellington network - a community currency system that's very well set up, once you get your head around the site navigation.


On the first day ...
For the first day I got no bites - except for a woman in Walthamstow, England who had logged into the Community Exchange System, and, without realising, hit a button that allowed her to see people's offerings from all over the world instead of just locally.

She asked if I would be willing to drop the figs off to her, as she had just broken her arm, and she invited me to a gardening group at the house of some people called Rob and Liz in Walthamstow village ... Well, frankly I would have LOVED to, but it was just a little too far to travel ...


But the next day ...
Hurray! I got another offer from the Community Exchange System (CES) - and this time it was from Wellington, NZ - someone wanting all the green figs. I looked up this woman's CES profile (hi Lillian!) and found that by happy chance one of her own offerings was clothing repairs.

Of course, when you use the CES, there's no need to do a direct swap. You sell your offerings to anyone on the system using whatever the unit of currency is in your area (in Wellington it's WITS), and you buy from anyone you like using the same currency. It's just like money. (And 1 WIT = 1 dollar.)

However, it seemed convenient that Lillian was offering clothing repairs when I had two skirts in desperate need of work. (I am a reluctant and very bad sewer.) For one thing, I could drop my skirts to her at the same time as the figs.

So that's what we did. I earned 10 WITS by selling her the figs, and I paid her 15 WITS for my skirt repairs, which I am very happy with.


Balancing the community exchange books
I am now in the red on the Community Exchange system, but that's okay.

Generally people in the system are encouraged to stay within 100 currency units of zero. That is, you can be up to 100 WITS in credit, or up to 100 WITS in debt, and there is no problem. Overall everything still stays in balance within the system, and it allows everyone involved some leeway to buy and sell at the times that work for them.

I'm quite excited about the possibilities of the WITS system in Wellington, and I hope it grows. The bigger it gets, and the more people become involved, the better and more useful it will be for everyone.



Back to the figs
I still had the ripe ones left, and they were getting riper and riper. I had no more offers from anywhere, so I decided to cook them myself. I made fig ice-cream, which was delicious!

If you've never had fig icecream, I can only say that in my opinion figs are one of the loveliest fruits for making frozen desserts from - with an incredible creamy mouthfeel.

 But I digress.

Wouldn't you know it, just after I had used all the figs I got TWO offers on them from the MyGarden Trader - offering variously to exchange cash, home-made preserves, freerange eggs, and home-harvested honey.

I've corresponded with one of the people who made an offer, and he is interested in more figs if I manage to get out to my mother-in-law's to pick them. So there are some possibilities there ...


And what of Oooby?
I know it sounds like, of the three systems I tried, the Oooby Wellington group was no help in my fig swap, but in fact it was, because I think it was the announcement I made there which sent Lillian over to the Community Exchange System to buy her figs using WITS.

So all in all, I would say all these trading systems are working nicely, and may they all continue to flourish and grow!