CraftyPod #84: Crafting Green: What’s It Mean?

great podcast, Diane! love your ideas on crafting for usefulness, and "sharing the handmade love" that we find at thrift stores with those in need.

great podcast as always, diane!! thanks so much for the mention, i'm so honored! i was glad to hear you talk about things like still supporting your local indie stores, and letting bigger companies know what we want. like you said, no matter how many recycled materials we use, we still sometimes need to shop at the chain stores for certain things, so the info about crafting a green world, how safe are your supplies, etc are much appreciated!! and, i'm also always saddened seeing handmade stuff at thrift stores - a few months ago at the bins i bought a bag full of granny squares, all different colors, obviously a project that never got put together. i still don't know what i'm going to do with them, but i couldn't let them get tossed!

Another great podcast, Sister Diane. I enjoyed all the different ways of thinking about sustainable crafting.

One of my goals this year is to frog or finish three cardigans that have been lurking in my UFO pile for far too long. But listening to this made me decide to make some fabric napkins for using at the dinner table. I'm no sewer but surely even I can run up a few sets of squares. It'll mean a little more washing but it's bound to be better than the amount of paper tissues we get through.

I really enjoyed this podcast! I listened to it while I was taking my morning walk! I really liked the way you talked about impacting on independent retailers. As an independent retailer, we often bare the brunt of campaigns against consumerism - but we are still here working hard and showcasing crafty people and inspiring people to be creative. Thanks for advising people to commit to supporting stores like ours!

Loved this show Diane, it's inspiring and thought provoking. I'm always thinking about my stash, so I think making it into a database is a great idea IF it helps. I'd love to read a future post about how that works out for you and how you're using it. I love databases but I think that making one would make me obsessed about THAT and then time to craft would diminish... ;-)

Also, the thought of using up your stash or at least using it more is great and on my mind constantly. You've read GTD right? Allen talks about how projects not written down stresses us because we have them in the back of our mind all the time! I find that be so true now that I know about it. I didn't think about it before.
I think that's what a pile of yarn, fabric etc does too. It creates stress as we want to use it NOW but can't because it's too much - and growing! (to me it's the same with books I want to read). We might NEVER get to the end of the pile even!? Go through it, give away stuff that you might not like any more - to thrift stores for example. And then maybe a database for the rest... hmm... :-)

Kudos on this podcast. What stuck with me was the idea of crafting for usefulness, given our current economy.

I loved the podcast, so many great ideas! I thought of something else that can be done with leftover craft supplies, make your own craft kit for someone. I've done this for the kiddos in my life and it has always been well received.

P.S. I've been following you on twitter and I love all the links you post. Thanks!

as always, awesome podcast. I'm not 100% sure how bamboo yarn stacks up against ackrylic in the green stakes, I have read that it is basically rayon, and it's quite a polluting process, nowhere as green as the marketing spin would have us believe. Haven't done the research myself so that info may be off. And, speaking of cloth napkins, there are *all kinds of napkins* you can sew to spare yourself exposure to nasty chemicals, and save on landfill. If you get my drift. :-)

It makes me sad to see handmade things abandoned in a thrift store too.

Great topic! Something to add: Think about crafting items that encourage "green" habits, ie: sewing up a set of cloth napkins or reusable grocery totes. (here comes the shameless book plug!) I have come up with a few more ideas along this line in my forthcoming book, Sewing Green. :)