Recycled Timber Products

These quality recycled timber frames are going to make your present giving this Christmas much easier. Yours to take home from the  green market!

upcycled softie love

Are you a crafty-type? if it’s a’ yes’  then we have a challenge for you!

SEND US YOUR SOFTIES!!

We are asking for people send us a homemade softie to be sold at our ecofest.

Money from the softies will go towards water tanks for the church, cutting down on the community’s water useage.

Spread the word, invite your friends, and get sewing.

The what’s and how’s….

Your beautiful softies should;

-be sent to “Ecofest at Western Heights, 27-31 Douglass St, Herne Hill, Geelong, 3218″ by the end of September.

-include some sort of upcycled/repurposed materials

- be clean and ready to go to a new home

participants will receive a small thankyou gift in response to their generous donation, along with a badge for your blog that says “i made a softie for ecofest!”

(you’ll need to include your postage address and an email address with your softie)

And if you are in Geelong, come along on Saturday the 9th of October and check out everyone’s creations.

What’s upcycling?

upcycling is the creative goodness of taking something that has been used before and creating something new and wonderful with it.

a wikipedia definition here

You might find some vintage fabric in an op shop and bring it together with some other materials to make a new skirt, or you may felt a jumper and make gloves, toys or a cape from it!

What’s a softie?

a softie is a soft toy, handmade with love. It could be an owl, a bear, a cat, a monster, an elephant, a bird… any number of things. It is soft and loveable.

What’s the love?

the love is you giving your creative energy to this project

Thanks- we look forward to receiving some upcycled softie love – any questions email ecofest.wh@gmail.com

XXX

transition towns

So has anyone heard of transition towns?  We have a couple here in Geelong- Transition Bell (3215 postcode) and Transition South Barwon (for the Belmont area).  Here’s a great definition of Transition Towns from the Transition Network website:

A Transition Initiative (which could be a town, village, university or island etc) is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction. There are thousands of initiatives around the world starting their journey to answer this crucial question:

“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly rebuild resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil and economic contraction) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”

Here’s how it all appears to be evolving…

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil, Climate Change, and increasingly, economic stagnation? They recognise several crucial points:

• to a certain degree, we all experience a life disconnected from our living environment, disconnected from our communities and disconnected from our landbase
• that our energy-profligate ways of living have depleted our resource base to critical levels
• that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
• that we have to act now, rather than wait for the government or “someone else”
• if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

For me, Transition Towns are important for finding out who does what locally- about finding local farmers to buy food from, local artisans for things you can’t make yourself, sharing skills and knowledge, bartering goods etc.  As time goes on, they will become more and more important to our everyday lives.

Link: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/