Healthy Money Diary 1: fortuitous meetings

Whenever I ponder the economic crisis (recession/coming financial apocalypse/whatever you want to call it) I come back again and again to the usefulness of local currencies and alternative forms of trading -  vital tools that could help enable ordinary people like me to cope.

Just lately I've started thinking about it all a lot more, and I thought I'd blog a semi-regular diary about it. I'm calling it the 'Healthy Money Diary', after a book I read the summer before last - Healthy Money, Healthy Planet by Deirdre Kent.

(Highly recommend! A fantastic, clear explanation of the global financial system and its failings ... plus a detailed look at alternative forms of trading within communities).

I really feel right now that I want to increase my involvement with alternative forms of trading and currency.

The flames of my interest were fanned a few weeks ago when I got to meet Helen Dew at a Wairarapa craft fair. If you don't know Helen, she is a highly respected and long-time advocate of community currencies, and a board member of the Living Economies Educational Trust. My part in the conversation with her consisted mostly of a lot of vigorous head nodding.

I sat on my thoughts for a bit. Then over the past week I had a couple of other fortuitous meetings:

* I discovered that an anonymous crafter whose blog I had just started reading (thinking this person has some extremely interesting things to say) is actually someone I slightly know in real life! I was thrilled.

I have been especially thinking about this post of hers about a wool mill closure in the South Island, and the ensuing comments. It's the kind of thing that I can foresee happening increasingly often over the next few years. I don't know the answers, but I feel sure they rest at least partly with finding new ways to trade and support local small business.

* Then on the weekend I had the opportunity to meet and chat in real life with Isa - The Nourishing Revolution blogger, which was lovely. We talked about the state of the world, as you do, and yes she is just as full of insights and ideas as you would expect from her blog! I felt galvanised to act after talking with her. (And it wasn't just the two coffees).

So here I am, inspired by the things other people say, and their passion and enthusiasm, determined to try and find different ways in my own life to trade. I don't exactly know what I'm going to do next, but I'll just work away at it, and blog my thoughts as I go (maybe once a week or so).

Oh! And if you are interested in a copy of Healthy Money, Healthy Planet, it is available here. (No, I don't get a commission.) :)

Cabbage trees!

Call me slow, but I didn't realise just how amazing Ti kouka and their rellies were until recently!

Today on This Way Up at 1.30, I'm chatting with Simon Morton about them, and I've just put up some info about them on Wild Picnic.

Next time I have a garden, the first thing I'm going to start planting is cabbage trees!

Scented yarn and beads for sale!

I've just taken the leap into selling handmade craft supplies. So far I've got a very small range of handspun yarn and beads available -  all scented one way or another with beautiful quality essential oils, absolutes, and extracts. (All natural botanicals - no synthetic fragrances).

I sold my first skein of wool and packet of beads at a small craft fair in the Wairarapa on the weekend, and other items are available at my new blog - Argot Bazaar ...

I'm in the throes of setting up a shop on Felt.

What I hope for is to have lots of fun experimenting with and learning new things in spinning and bead-making and fragrance - and to produce some appealing raw materials that others will see potential in for their own creations - and for it all to somewhat pay its way! (Well, okay, maybe the paying its own way bit is kinda over optimistic ...) I'll be adding new things to the site often.

Perfume sample winners

Thanks for the entries! I wanted to send everyone some. But winners drawn with closed eyes and lots of swirling round of the paper are - Nikki and Gillybean! Could you drop me a line with your addresses? My email is johanna dot knox @ gmail.com

Good Magazine article

The newest issue of Good Magazine is out - and includes an article  I wrote about the growing natural perfumery movement.

It was a lot of fun writing this article and talking to all the perfumers from around the world. I could only include a fraction of the fascinating stuff they told me, so over the next little while I'll feature longer interviews with some of them on this blog, like Ambrosia Jones and Charna Ethier.

The article is in Good's Smarter Living section. Table of Contents here! :)

P.S. If you haven't entered my draw below - for a 2ml sample of a delicious natural perfume, and you would like to, enter now. I'll draw it on Sunday.

Natural Perfume Giveaway ...

Want to share?

I never normally win a thing in giveaways and draws - but by some amazing luck I managed to score an incredible spray bottle of scent by California Perfumer JoAnne Bassett.

It's completely delicious, and since I have so much, I'd love to decant a couple of 1.5 ml samples and give them away.

The perfume is called 'Sensual Embrace' - you can see it and read about it here. It's made entirely from natural ingredients - a rare thing in perfume these days! (Although a small but growing number of artisan perfumers are doing it.) JoAnne created this perfume as part of The Mystery of Musk Project recently run by the US-based Natural Perfumers Guild.

To enter, just add a comment to this post, and I'll put all commenters in a draw, which my lovely assistant (AKA my daughter) will help with.

I have some other small samples of JoAnne Bassett's perfumes as well, though I'm keeping those to myself! She is amazing. (I read somewhere that one of her perfumes blends 39 natural ingredients. It seems hard to me to blend three without it smelling like a dog's breakfast.)

If you're interested in finding out more about natural perfumery, I have a small article on it it coming out (I think) in the August/September Good magazine. I'll also blog about it some more.

Geraniums ... I mean Pelargoniums!

We went foraging for these round the neighbourhood last week, and it's on This Way Up at 12.20 today.

The scented species of these plants are especially amazing. There's a huge 'rose geranium' bush down the road from me, whose leaves I've been tincturing for their fragrance; and I've just bought some apple-scented geraniums.

I mean pelargoniums.

I've written more about this group of plants at Wild Picnic.

Artisan Perfumery Course

No time to post screeds at the moment, but I thought over the next few weeks I would post a few bits and pieces about my current journey into the addictive world of smelly stuff.

If anyone is interested, there's a rare opportunity to do an intensive artisan perfumery course in Wellington in early September - using natural botanical ingredients. The teacher is Alec Lawless, an artisan perfumer from the UK. To my knowledge - this is the first time a course like this has been held in New Zealand.

If I weren't going away when the course is on (which I'm quite sad about), I would be scrounging up money to do it every way I could!
There are details here at Wellington City Council's Feeling Great site.

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