zzzzzzz

Saturday night we had a glorious storm - thunder, lightning, the works! All that has ushered in two days of unseasonably cool weather and a breeze so clean and crisp it feels like the first day of school. With the bedroom window wide open to the breeze and some fresh sheets, the bed was full of cats today, snoozing away happily. It was so hard not to join them.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve been so exhausted lately. Normally, spring makes me energetic, but the past few months have been just exhausting and all I want to do is sleep for a week!

The Kirkwood Spring Fling is next weekend, which is awesome. Last year, we had a cage of kittens in our tent! Lucie was just a wee ball of fur.

After Kirkwood, we get two weekends off before SuperCute! hosts the Indie Craft Experience pre-party on friday the 6th, and then of course the Indie Craft Experience itself is on the 7th. We’ll be screening the Craft Documentary at the pre-party! squee!

Speaking of ICE… the ICE girls are looking for volunteers to help during the festival with a few jobs like directing traffic (parking) and helping out in the on-site craft tent! Are you available? All volunteers are welcome to the party and get an awesome swag bag!

Man. I seriously think it’s bedtime. The rest of my errands will have to wait until tomorrow, I can barely keep my eyes open! zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

The New Mafia

This article in Vanity Fair is quite long, but it is a good read on the tactics that a certain corporate giant is taking to ensure they control the world’s food supply. This company and it’s tactics make cinema’s most cold-blooded bad guys seem like common street hustlers.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

______________

I’m always torn about posting articles like that. On the one hand, I think it’s really important to get the word out about what is happenning in our world (and that idea often wins, but not always), but on the other hand, those articles are scary and sad and often leave me feeling like I can’t ever do enough.

Then I read something like this:
about a woman who turned a barren patch of NYC land into a lush paradise

and it renews my faith that one person really CAN make a difference. And that makes me want to try even harder.

 

quoting NoImpactMan

add him to your blogroll, really. good stuff!
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/try.html
________________________

We need a peaceful revolution in thinking and living.
The problem is that the revolutionaries are otherwise engaged. They’re delivering Fedex packages, waiting tables, driving taxis, entering data and countless other tasks–including, yes, writing books and blogs–for 12 hours a day.
They’re working their butts off to afford the gas and the car payments and the Christmas presents. They’re worried about whether their kids are safe, whether they’ll be able to afford the mortgage, how they’ll pay if they break a leg.

So when the news comes on and some newscaster starts droning on about the climate, they care, yes. And they think we ought to take care of it. Just as soon as we take care of the health care system and the economy and national security.

It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we’re more scared of today than we are of tomorrow.

The way modern life is set up in these United States, so many of us feel like we could fall off the tightrope at any moment and there’s no safety net. What happens to an American who loses a job and gets sick? Without some sense of security, how can we risk taking our eyes off our daily tightrope long enough to worry about the problems of the future?

It’s not selfishness. It’s not apathy. It’s not mindlessness.
It’s busyness.
We’re too busy to think.

**********
But however we define the problem, the question stays the same:
How can we help?

 

Herbivores, biodegradeable zippers and Athens, oh my!

Yes, this post will be random, you’ve been warned.

First! This weekend, SuperCute! will be truckin’ it up to Athens for the Craftstravaganzaa!!!

Then, we’ll be rushing back home for Youngblood’s Grand Opening Party!!

In sustainable sewing news, I ran across these the other day. So far, they appear to only be in Europe, but I’m still hunting.

First: Zippers made from recycled plastics.

Second: Biodegradeable Zippers! (break down in your compost bin, wow)

So.Cool.

And while I’m linking, here’s a great article that pretty much sums up why I’m mostly vegetarian, and how I feel about people who make fun of me for it: http://www.slate.com/id/2190872
excerpt:
“Please don’t try to convince us that being vegetarian is somehow wrong. … If you want to have an amiable tête-à-tête about vegetarianism, that’s great. But if you insist on being the aggressive blowhard who takes meatlessness as a personal insult and rails about what fools we all are, you’re only going to persuade me that you’re a dickhead.”

oh look, here’s a cute kitten picture!

 

Back to the Land

A series of talks on YouTube by the UK’s TheSoilAssociation.

The rest of the series is in the sidebar of this video, and partially explains why I am so obsessed with getting a viable garden planted and running within the next year.

 

it’s a press kind of day, apparently!

Rememeber the girl who made us so happy because she loved our shopping bags?
Well she also looks awfully darn cute in the skirt she bought from me (and she knits a mean baby dress, wow!)
http://itsmakebelieve.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/tis-the-season/#comment-21

Thank you!!!!!!

 

Speaking of press…

My DIY bubble-mailer tutorial got written up in the GreenGirlGuides newsletter! Hurrah!
Thanks Courtney!

 

I’ve been blogged at EarthyFinds

The awesome Hyla Waldron over at the EarthyFinds blog interviewed me a little while ago for an eco-friendly feature! Now it’s up, yay! Go check out the rest of her blog, she reviews some really great products, and I just love her tagline: “one reader at a time”.

EarthyFinds writeup

Thank you Hyla!

 

I finally got a treasury!

click HERE to go see!!!

 

Following your Heart.

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, about my life, what matters to me the most, and where I want to see myself in a month, a year, 5 years. Some of this is undoubtedly because another birthday fast approaches, some of it is the political debates and the news about our changing world, and some of it is simply the end result of some really great conversations about possibility.

All those things and more have led me to the decision to resign my role in the Atlanta Craft Mafia.
I’m really glad Jenny asked me to be part of re-forming the ACM, and I believe very strongly in building the crafty community through organizations such as this. If nothing else, this experience made me think very seriously about what a collective can do, and how multiple voices are so much more effective than individual ones.

Unfortunately, it’s also become apparent that the things that really speak to my heart are not things which the rest of the group shares an interest in. Where I view Craft and Craftivism as two sides of the same coin, the majority of the ladies of the ACM feel the role of the organization lies in a different direction. Environmental and sustainability issues are simply not something they feel are appropriate for the group at this time.

I’m grateful for these experiences which got me thinking about the bigger picture, and gave me the confidence that I really can make a difference. However, it is also SuperCute! which gives me an outlet for these things which I feel most passionately about, and ultimately, I must follow my heart.