Old T-shirts for Christmas

Martin and I are both fairly hard on our T-shirts (and wear T-shirts a lot), so I have a ready supply of old T-shirts for crafts.  Originally I was using them to make rag rugs (there's one about half-way down this blog post); but most people I think are likely to want one of those have one now, so before Christmas I was looking for new ideas.  Here's what I ended up with :-)

T-shirt pompoms.  Like regular pompoms, but bigger.  You cut the T-shirt into quite narrow strips, pull the strips to make them curl in on themselves, then make a pompom (something I don't think I've done since primary school!).  It takes about one T-shirt per pompom.

a string of 7 bunting pompoms, made for my 'almost family'

Bicycle rain poncho for Project Glow Wear

I've just finished a huge project: a rain poncho for Martin to wear whilst cycling :-)

It was prompted by Project Glow Wear: a competition put on by the Greater Wellington Regional Council to encourage people to make clothing and accessories that include reflective elements.  They provided reflective fabric to all entrants (something I'd never even thought to investigate how to buy) which was definitely what tipped me over into deciding to enter.

Aquafaba for glazing pies

Today I discovered another use for aquafaba*: glazing pie pastry!  People use aquafaba as an egg or egg-white substitute in meringues, marshmallow, baking etc., so I thought it might work for glazing, too.  I'm really pleased with the result :-)

* the water in which chickpeas or other pulses have been cooked

Blackberry and apple pie for today's Sunday celebration.  The blackberries came from friends from church and the apples from our neighbours' tree.  We ate it with home-made yoghurt and it was delicious :-)

I simply brushed aquafaba over the top before baking and, as you can see, it came out a lovely golden colour.  Aquafaba is something we generate at least once a week, so I'll definitely be using it in the future: I'd much rather use something I'd otherwise throw away than use half an egg and be left wondering what to do with the rest!

A sashiko sunhat for me :-)

I realised a while back that my sunhat, whilst fun and very me, doesn't actually shield my face from the sun very well.

What to do?  I thought it'd be a fun challenge to try and make myself a new one from things I already had lying around the house.  It felt like it'd be a great use of  resources, too :-)

The wonders of bean water!

A friend recently drew my attention to 'aquafaba' (literally 'bean water') - the water you've cooked chickpeas or beans in.  It's kind of gelatinous, and someone figured out that you can use it just like egg white: it can even be beaten to stiff peaks!

When I heard that, I had to try it!  After all, we cook beans or chickpeas at least once every week and just throw the water away...

First up, I had a go at making vegan meringues. I used the Edmonds pavlova recipe, substituting 30mL 'aquafaba' for each egg white*, spooned it onto lined baking trays and baked it for about an hour and half at 120C.

* We cook chickpeas from dry, rather than using canned canned ones.  The water we get from doing that is quite thick - a lot like egg white.  Apparently the water from canned beans is thinner, so you either need to use twice as much or cook it down till it's as thick as egg white.
 

Soft plastics recycling bag

Since late last year, it's been possible to recycle soft plastics in Auckland.  As well as actual plastic bags, you can recycle all sorts of things - small things like muesli bar and sweet wrappers and bulky things like bubble wrap.

The recycling is collected at supermarkets*, rather than with the other kerbside recycling, so we needed a separate container to accumulate it in.  Initially we used a plastic bag sock, but that wasn't very suitable: small things fell out, and transferring the contents into a plastic bag to put into the recycling container was a pain.  I realised I wanted a way to accumulate the recycling in a container that could itself be recycled (to eliminate the double-handling we'd been doing), was quite capacious (to accommodate bulky things like bubble wrap) but that had a firm base and a tight top (so little things didn't fall out).

*find your local collection site here - they're in Auckland, the North Shore and Hamilton, with hopes to expand throughout the country over the next few years.

Inspired by the rubbish bin we had when I was a child (which held heavy paper bags securely in place by folding the top of the bag under a rigid ring), this is what I came up with.

   
A bag that contained a regular supermarket plastic bag, with the handles of that bag folded over a rigid ring and secured by a loop of elastic.  When the bag is full you tie the handles of the supermarket bag together then remove it through a zip at the bottom.

How to make a solar box cooker

A few years back, I made Martin a solar box cooker for his birthday.  It still seems 'magic' to me: who would have thought you could make a real oven that really gets hot using only the sun and a bunch of 'rubbish'?!
Recently I was asked for some guidance by someone else wanting to make one.  My reply is below.
Note that there are three main kinds of solar cookers (box, panel and parabolic) - these notes are for a box cooker.

DIY Yuba "Go-Getter" pannier

For Christmas 2014 I decided to do something I'd been dreaming of for ages: make Martin a pannier for his cargo bike.  Several panniers for the Yuba Mundo are commercially available: the Baguette, the Go-Getter and slings.  I decided to model my pannier on the Go-Getter: it has more capacity than the Baguette and better suited the materials I had available than did a sling.  I finished it in February and now it gets a work-out every week fetching our groceries from the market :-)

Here's how it was done :-)  Regular blog readers might not be that interested in what follows - it's long and detailed!

Upcycled Christmas presents

This year I was delighted to be able to make a lot of my Christmas presents from things that had been discarded, or buy discarded things for re-gifting.  I love doing that because it's frugal and because it forces me to be creative, but most of all I love doing it because it's a gift to some of the poorest people on the planet, not just the recipient.*

* to see what I mean, read this earlier blog post.

One resource that's really helped with that is the website 'get textbooks'.  Despite the name, they're a website that helps you find books of all kinds second hand.  They search zillions of other websites for your book, then present the results sorted by how much it costs to ship the book to NZ.  It's awesome!  I spend a lot of my time listening to audio books and keep a note of those I particularly like.  After choosing titles from my list that I thought would suit various people I entered them into 'get textbooks' and was able to find every one I wanted, in good condition, for only $10-$15 each (including shipping).

Many other presents were hand-made from discarded materials: something I chipped away at as I was able between June and November.

When we got our lounge curtains we got 'remaindered' ones, many of which were too long for our windows.  We duly shortened them and I kept the offcuts, some of which I have now used to make a toiletries bag.  The curtains are thermal-backed so the bag will be waterproof.

I've used 5 of Martin's old T-shirts (along with one of mine and one of Sarah's) to make 3 Christmas presents: two scarves (instructions for tying the square knot they use are here) and a bathmat.

The bathmat is backed with hessian from an old coffee sack: if you don't back these mats, when you wash them they just turn into one big knot :-(

 

From off-cut bits of felt from other projects, I made a set of tropical fish fridge magnets.  The actual magnets were culled from surplus 'self denial' boxes from Tranzsend's 2013 appeal.

 

From felt offcuts and the same magnets I also made some magnetic pincushions; other felt offcuts turned into a baby ball.

Lastly, I made an 'eco travel lid' for my cousin: a food cover you can use in place of glad wrap.  It looks like a large shower cap and can fit quite a range of bowls and plates.  The outer is fair trade cotton and the waterproof lining is gore-tex(!) from a cycling jacket of Sarah's that got damaged beyond repair.

Finally, just to show off, this set of tea towels are the Christmas present I was most pleased with.  They're not upcycled (the actual tea towels are brand new and the cotton isn't even fair trade), but I just love them!  The borders are fabric paint and the flowers are crayon (ironed into the fabric so it'll survive washing) edged with stem stitch.

Bicycle inner tube woven chair

See here for an update from March 2017 on how the chair has survived three years in the sun.

The plastic 'cane' on one of our outdoor chairs recently started to snap all down one side:
 

The chair was still usable, but clearly wasn't going to stay that way for much longer!

Inspired by my success with our bathroom stool, I decided to weave a new seat for it out of old bicycle inner tubes.

It took:

• 4-5 inner tubes cut into 1 inch strips lengthways (they came in two different widths, so some gave two strips and some gave three).  I forgot to count the tubes before I cut them up so I'm not exactly sure how many I used!
• 7 'sessions' of 30-45 minutes each (two to prep the tubes, two to cut off the old cane, one to thread the length-ways parts of the chair seat and two to do the actual weaving);
• scissors (to cut the strips of inner tube), a bucket and rag (to clean the tubes - the insides are powdered with talc), secateurs (to cut the cane), a stanley knife (used in joining strips of inner tube together) and sellotape (to secure the tubes while part of the work was in progress).

And now it's done!

As I couldn't find any tutorials online for doing such a thing, below are some notes on how I went about it.

Please note, the chair lasted about three years (in full sun, in New Zealand where the the sun is uncommonly harsh) before it needed 'recaning'.  Click here to see the deterioration in the rubber that had occurred after three years.

DIY sleeping mat/pad chair kit

For Christmas, I wanted to make Martin a chair that he could use when he goes to the cricket or goes camping.  He's already got a self-inflating camping mat so the obvious chair to make was a "camping mat chair kit": a kind of fabric sleeve that would slide over his existing mat and turn it into a chair.  Finally, admittedly a few months after Christmas, it's done!

I couldn't find any instructions online about how to make such a thing so gleaned information about commercial chair kits from promotional materials and online reviews.  It turns out there were many details to get right.  I'm wanting to share here what I learned along the way so that other people don't have to sew and resew their mat chairs quite as many times as I did in order to get a functional product!

Regular blog readers might want to stop reading here - what follows is detailed and rather long!

Re-upholstered bathroom stool

Our bathroom stool was moving from 'looking tired' towards 'no longer functional'.  The time had come to re-cover the seat!

I found some instructions that looked workable but I didn't have enough vinyl to do it without buying more.  A check of TradeMe revealed that vinyl is surprisingly expensive.  What to do?

Just then, Martin had to go out.  He went outside then popped back in to pick up a piece of bicycle inner tube rubber, marvelling as he did so that they seemed to be an inexhaustible resource around here.  Ah ha!  I bet they'd make a nice wipeable cover for our stool :-)

A quick internet search revealed that others had had this idea before me.  At first I thought I'd follow these instructions, but Martin thought a woven top would be nicer and I could always seal the edge with more inner tube, rather than metal.  (Aren't the prices being charged for those commercially-available stools astonishing!!)

So, I set to and ripped off the old vinyl.

I pieced together some scraps of vinyl to protect the foam from any drips of water that might make it through the woven cover;

then wove strips of inner tube together in situ;

and finished it with a strip of inner tube around the sides.

 

All up it only took me two 'up times' (a bit under two hours) and was immensely satisfying!  Photos of the whole process are on flickr.

Fun with hessian

Late last year I acquired a coffee bean sack.

Here are some of the things I've made from it :-) 

Rooster doorstop for my mother-in-law

Kokako coasters to go with 'kokako' brand fair trade drinking chocolate

Padded felt picture of a kokako for my niece

Padded felt kowhai picture for a good friend

Coffee bean sacks are huge!  All of this has used just over half of one side of it!