Back to school with the Barn of Opportunity

I am very excited to be an instructor this fall at the newly established Long Branch School of Maine.  When I learned of the plans for this new school in Bowdoinham from one of its owners, Pete Feeney, I was hoping that I could find a course to teach that would fit with the school's mission.  From the school's website: 

The Mission of Our School is to:     - provide people with skills they need to live sustainably.
    - rekindle the skills and lifestyles of our heritage in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.
    - provide people a unique and fulfilling experience that builds community and re-localizes our economy
    - incubate and grow businesses that support a local, sustainable economy. 

I thought about the Barn and the many fiber things that I have made using salvaged materials.  Nanette Giacoma, another of the school's owners was enthusiastic  about a three part class teaching three fiber crafts.  We talked details and timing and I am pleased to promote "Upcycling" Fiber, which begins October 6th and continues October 20th and November 3rd.  You'll make items that will fill your holiday gift list.  I picked a Thursday morning to meet so that the class can travel to the Barn to collect supplies.

Rag rugs, jean skirts and wool hats, totes and toys... sound fun?

I do hope you will sign up and help me fulfill my favorite part of the mission, the part about providing a fulfilling experience and building community.  I sure can't do that by myself.

reduce, reuse, recycle ...REPAIR!

I'm lovin' my forth "R" today.  The forth R in the R's of preserving our planet's resources being repair. (The fifth "R" by the way is RENT but that will be the focus of another day's adventure)  Today I went early to the Barn of Opportunity on a pure drop-off mission. No time nor intention to look around in the Gift Shop, nor chat with neighbors and friends. Not a minute to admire the tomatoes nor pet Tuckah.  In and Out, I said.  Yet I managed to spot these fine three ladies and bring them right home.  They had the typical rotted webbing on the seats and clearly the former owners feared they might fall through.

 I knew that I had this massive roll of new webbing from my friend Brigid (you remember her from this post, I'm sure). When she comments here I'm sure she will share where she got this roll.  Anyway, I was really inspired by necessity since I am hosting a bit of a backyard event tomorrow and need more seating.

 I was happy to discover that the straps were individually attached by this simple piece of metal on each end, popped into a hole in the aluminum, and that I could take apart the old straps and replace them with new ones without any tools at all. Well, I needed scissors to cut the webbing but that doesn't really count, does it?

 The webbing on the white chair was a bit more challenging but still only needed a screwdriver to take apart and repair.  I skipped the machine rivet and just slipped the screw through three layers of webbing.

You'll see I didn't replace ALL the straps that could have used replacement (did I mention the rush?) but I'm sure no one will fall through the seat on my watch.

The whole project took me an hour or so. And I'm feeling mighty proud of the results. Didn't make a dent in Brigid's webbing roll, but I do have a few more things to repair with this awesome stuff before I give the roll back.

When did we begin to think that the term "disposable" was a good thing? And how can we turn that around? I know that I often think, "It's so cheap to replace these!", but in this case, cheap is not good for the planet. I sometimes think that my time is more "valuable" than the replacement cost and that the quick and easy replacement purchase is the way to go vs. the time-consuming repair job, but I am working hard to battle that decision and think of the value of my resources and my resourcefulness for that matter.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Repair. and REAP the good feelings.

Before you Recycle this week's news...

...dig into the newspaper box to the Maine Sunday Telegram from this past Sunday, Aug 14, and pull out section A.  On page 11 there is a big ol' coupon from Hannaford, offering $2 off any "Close to Home" produce item.  Yup, that means when you are in the produce section of Hannaford (we don't need to be there much at this time of year, do we? I admit I still need my avocados and bananas... I digress) you look carefully for the nifty stickers under the item labels for another label that says "Close to Home" which alerts you to the fact that that item was grown nearby.  I'm not an extreme couponer but $2 off gets my attention.  And this time I used it to buy a beloved product: organic arugula grown 100 yards from my front door. Really.

 People know I love to exaggerate to make a good story but this time, when I say it's grown 100 yards from my front door, I am NOT exaggerating. I took this picture standing on my front step. That's my driveway, my lawn, my small patch of corn, berries and weeds, and beyond that, is the Locally Grown greens of loveliness. Maybe it's LESS than a 100 yards. I'm a football mother, I should know my yardage.

We love to watch the farmers till, fertilize, sculpt, plant, weed and harvest this product.  The bummer is that our local Brunswick Hannaford doesn't carry it consistently. I found this box on my way through Lewiston. So you'll need add the price of a drive to Lewiston or Gardiner to your price.  Normally $2.99, but for the coupon clippin' woman from Bowdoinham? .99. Not bad.
You can read an outdated but nice article about this farm here.

Now, what can I make out of that plastic box it comes in?

Book Group Tackles "How-To" books

My book group at the Bowdoinham Public Library is called Stitch and Pitch. We knit (or not) and pitch our favorite reads from the preceding month.  Instead of assigning a particular title, we agree on a theme and everyone reads whatever they want (or not) on that theme (or not).  We pride ourselves on being the guilt-free book group.  July's book theme was "How-To Books".  We were encouraged to try something new learned from a book. I don't need much encouragement to make a project from a book.  I've been squirreling away two new library books and I made a project from each of them.  The first is called The Perfect Handmade Bag by Clare Youngs.  It's got great recycled and repurposed fabric ideas and snappy designs for handbags and purses.  I wanted to start with the simple "Fold-up Shopper".  You know I am psycho about avoiding the plastic bag, so I try to carry handy, good-looking fabric bags and always have one "at the ready".  I thought this shopper would make a great teacher gift or a have-on-hand gift for ya-never-know-who.  I used a recycled sheet I lifted from Bin #1 at the Barn for the base fabric and added some new fabric with pretty rainbow kale on it. Thanks to my friend Deborah who made one along with me and figured where the pattern maker had made a small but annoying mistake.  If anyone takes the book out of the library, I'll be sure to share Deborah's simple correction.

 The next book I read is called The Reporposed Library by Lisa Occipinti.  If you came to the "Treasures from the Library Attic" booth at last year's Artisan Guild Show, you know that this book was made for me. I'm pretty excited when I can find a use for old books that don't sell at our used book sale.  This book contains 33 projects.  Several were familiar, and others I had never seen before.  I had recently received a slew of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and wanted to try my hand at using them for a book shelf shown in the book.  Please believe me when I say that condensed books DO NOT sell at the book sale and we end up hauling them to the Barn of Opportunity.  They do however, make lovely journal covers and, this time, a nifty shelf.  A trip to the hardware store for "mending plates" (who knew?), glue all around the pages, cut out a bit of pages and secure three books together end to end.


The brackets to hold the shelf were the fun part. When the banister in the Coombs School building was recently replaced, some old handsome (broken) metal supports were replaced.  Kevin Prout repaired them (solder?) and graciously let me have a few.

My plan is to hang this somewhere in the building so that we can all continue to admire these old metal pieces.




If a few of my book group pals would allow me to share, I'll post some pictures of their projects and inspiring books. Just say the word, women. We witnessed jam, crocheting, an impressive garden trellis, an RV waste management lesson, and a soldered pipe!  Please join us on the fourth Thursday of each month at 7 in the library. August's theme: survival books.

I can't be trusted...

 ...with an electric iron.  Really.  Trust me with a library, a car, a group of children, a sharp object, or even a large group of children with sharp objects, but do NOT trust me with an iron. Back in this post I promised to tell you about the old rug's burn mark. Here's a closeup:








As you've figured out, I do a lot of crafts at my house.  I do my own version of multi-tasking that I now call "scattertasking".  That means I do many things at once and don't pay attention to the small details like turning off the iron when I'm done or putting it down where it can cool appropriately.  So bad things happen when I use an iron.With the rug incident,  I left the iron on and someone ELSE knocked it off the ironing board.  Team negligence.

Can you believe this one? I did this all by myself!

















I rarely use my iron for ironing clothes but instead use it for melting stuff like plastic bags, or adhering sticky stuff onto fabric (like Wonder-Under or Craft Fuse or Misty Fuse) so that fabric can then be melted onto another layer of fabric.  All this melting and burning and sticky stuff leads to many many many ruined irons here.  This is where the Barn of Opportunity comes in. I never never never buy irons. They come to me in the Gift Shop at the Barn.  If my insurance agent is reading, please know that I now restrict myself to those irons with the Auto-Off feature.

I think a lot about planned obsolescence in these types of small appliances.  I learned a lot from Annie Leonard and her video (and subsequent book) called The Story of Stuff. Take some the time to watch the whole video and you may learn something new, but for now, here is a clip of the full length video that tells about planned obsolescence. With electric irons,  it may not be about fashion, or having the latest, greatest model, but how many of us think about having an iron repaired when it's so darn easy and cheap to simply go and buy another one?  I get around the issue by using someone else's cast off iron.

And at our house, when the sticky, burned, encrusted irons are no longer desirable to one person... they are used to melt wax either off or onto some other person's skis. 

I've got to go now.  I smell something burning.

At long last, the Fashions

I haven't forgotten! Just a wee bit busy with a few other things. The Altered Couture fashion show at the Frontier on June 15 was pure entertainment.  There were designers who were 9 years old...

Designers who were teenagers, and designers who weren't teenagers!  There were drag queens and grandmothers. All of the artists spent $30 or less at second hand stores for their materials. A panel of local judges gave each design marks from 0-10.

 I loved this design, which had a sheer black fabric on top of a  hand-painted flower design.

 Susan Perrine created the incredible dress out of childrens board books.  Here is the artist with her model.

And the Bowdoinhamers: our friend Sara Cox posing after the show with her model, Georgia Ahlers.

You know when Sara's creations appear tame, that you are in a wild crowd.Head to toe, lovely.

And here is the show's host and creator, Christine DeTroy, with another young contestant.  I imagine Christine was pleased with the show.  The 25 designers:
 
Christine DeTroy, Rose Edwards, Patricia Boissevain, Angela Ann Alderete, Ruth Connelly, Shon Rivera,  Emily Weir, Elica Edwards, Donald Edwards, Hannah Herrick, Laurie Sims, Isaac Atkins, Kim De Vries, Catherine Worthington, Marji Greenhut, Molly Blaisdell, Susan Perrine, Aura Ever, Joe Swain, Sara Cox, Rebecca Hammer, Barbara Kay, Crank Sturgeon, Chana Boone.

And the winner was: "Crank" Sturgeon, whose creation appeared to be mostly made from camping equipment.  He stole the show. To watch a 4 minute video of Crank's runway moment, complete with amazing sound, check out this video from the Frontier Facebook page. ( If it doesn't load, try searching for Crank Sturgeon Altered Couture and you'll find it). Thanks, Brigid, for joining me for a very fun evening out. Next year... let's see some Barn of Opportunity fashions out there.

Altered Couture Tomorrow Night

It may be a bit mean to tell you about a great event for which tickets are already sold out.  I'm lucky to have two tickets to the Altered Couture Fashion Show at the Frontier for tomorrow night. It will benefit the ArtVan.  $5 to get in and then an auction for the fashions we see.  Artists were invited to design and create using no more than $30 worth of second hand or re-purposed clothing or materials from GoodWill or other resale stores.  Sara Cox of Bowdoinham has been "sewing for 2 days straight" and gave me this little glimpse of just ONE of her outfits that will hit the runway tomorrow night. 

 Fiber artist Susy Perrine blogged about her dress, (made from children's books!!!!) in progress here.  If they allow me to take pictures, I'll blog about afterwards. 

Now I ask you, isn't recycling the perfect vehicle for art?