Refashioning, Repurposing, Upcycling

My favourite approach to crafting, as you may realise if you've been reading this blog for a while, is to refashion old items into new. I buy up unselleable and broken jewellery from second hand shops or take similar items from friends, family and aquaintances.

My latest project involved a leather thong necklace with some charms, that once were all probably lovely but now the biggest charms were decidedly less than charming. I removed the charms from the necklace and put the large unusable ones in the pile of totally broken jewellery that I send to be recycled. I then also removed the fasteners from the necklace and put them into my stash of  jewellery fasteners. I then attached the remaining charms from the necklace to one end of the leather and added some charms from my stash of upcycled charms to the other end.

And so the necklace became a bookmark

and it's now for sale in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop, here.

Focus by Daniel Goleman

 

Subtitled The Hidden Driver of Excellence this is a psychology book that has an underlying environmentalist emphasis, though you're well on your way through the book before you realise this.

The main topics covered are how to pay better attention to your tasks and what is going on in the world around you. It looks at how attention can be improved and can lead to better academic and lifetime achievements. It looks at empathy and how greater empathy can benefit the work of the medical professions and managers. It also looks at how to think about how systems and the future work, while your attention is drawn most to the urgent tasks at hand. This is where the underlying environmental message comes into play.

An example is made of 'zero emission' electric cars, which in fact are only zero emission in terms of the car itself, but very likely emissions are involved in the production of the electricity used to drive the car. So though very valuable in terms of reducing pollution in city centres and while being better than petrol or diesel cars they're still cars and in their production and in their fuelling they do still cause emissions. But we need to move from the narrow focus on the car itself to the broader focus on the whole system to see this.

It is clear, according to the author that the way our brains work evolved for simpler times

'Our brain's perceptual apparatus has fine tuning for a range of attention that has paid off in human survival. While we are equipped with razor sharp focus on smiles and frowns.......we have zero neural radar for the threats to the global systems that support human life.'  

He then talks about positive approaches to dealing with our current pressing environmental issues.

Note: If you're looking for a self help book to improve your focus and enable you to become more successful, this probably isn't the book for you.

Focus by Daniel Goleman published (2013) by Bloomsbury.

How can we ensure that the new Environment Bill will be best fit for purpose?

 

view from Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh

Whether we are outdoor types, nature lovers or not, at the end of the day, we all rely on nature and we need to make sure that wildlife and the wider environment are properly protected.

Yet nature is struggling. Once familiar animals and plants are vanishing from our gardens and countryside. We're pushing species to extinction, changing our climate, generating mountains of waste and polluting our rivers, oceans and even the very air we breathe.

For years, nearly all United Kingdom environmental legislation has come from the European Union (you can read my long blog post about that here). Although not perfect, this legislation has made a huge difference to nature protection and environmental standards in this country.

Although Brexit is currently being delayed until October, it is likely we will leave the EU then and it’s vital that we then still have laws in place to maintain and improve on our environmental standards. The Environment Bill (currently in draft form) is the legislation that will eventually replace the EU rules.

The broad aims of the bill are to:

* Ensure a healthy environment, which people understand and value and feel engaged in and where the impacts we make are effectively managed;

* Ensure equal levels of protection for the environment across the whole of the UK;

* Act as the driving force behind other legislation e.g. future agriculture policy;

* Strengthen the independence and powers of a planned new 'watchdog' (The Office for Environmental Protection).

The details of the bill are yet to be defined and this is where campaigners step in.

The UK government has committed ‘to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we inherited it’. But will this commitment be translated into robust, meaningful action or will we be left with watered down laws and a poorer quality environment?


Greener UK is a coalition of nationwide environmental charities (including the Woodland Trust) that are campaigning to make sure that when it is enshrined in law, the environment bill is bold and effective and will ensure that our wildlife and wider environment continue to be protected. You can find out some of the various ways you can get involved through the coalition here and the Woodland Trust offers a form for you to email your MP here.

This Environment Bill is UK wide but focussed on England. To join the campaign for a Scottish Environment Bill, please go here. 

New Leaves and A Hidden Woodpecker

I noticed these lovely young ivy leaves on the wall of Colinton Churchyard today

Aren't they pretty?

The wild garlic leaves have been out for a couple of weeks now but still almost no flowers, though they already smell of garlic.....

In two different areas of the Dells today I heard a green woodpecker, as in fact I have done over the last couple of weeks. Staff from the Water of Leith Conservation Trust have also heard it, though no one as far as I know has seen it! Green woodpeckers are uncommon birds, in Edinburgh the only reliable place to see them as far as I know is Corstorphine Hill (where one often sits inside a hollow tree trunk and laughs). I've only once before this year heard a green woodpecker in the Dells, so it would be really nice to know they're making their home there! Great spotted woodpeckers are quite common in the Dells and in fact I saw two today though not that I could catch them on camera!

A Wild Day Out in Holyrood Park

The sun was shining for today's Wild Day Out in Holyrood Park, hosted by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Historic Environment Scotland as part of Edinburgh Science Festival. Several marquees were set up around the Rangers Centre

and there was a full programme of events happening all day

I watched two birds being ringed (I think this is known as banding in the US?) - a male blackbird who sang all throughout the process and a coal tit. Both birds were then released and if their rings are retrieved in the future, or of the bird is caught again (as in fact the blackbird was on this occasion) then the information can be checked back and added to statistics about that species.

It was then time for me to join Robbie from the Rangers team to lead a guided walk. There was a good selection of walks throughout the day

Our walk went into Hunters Bog (seen in it's entirety in this photo which I took after the event when Crafty Green Boyfriend joined me for our own walk, I didn't take any photos during the guided walk).

While we were in Hunters Bog, Robbie showed us replicas of prehistoric items that have been found here (including a very useful portable sewing kit complete with bone sewing needles) and I talked about gorse, encouraging everyone (carefully as it's a prickly plant!) to sniff it (it smells of coconut). We also listened to the birds and watched a territorial dispute among the mallards on the small pond in the middle of the bog. We then walked over to St Margaret's Pond and fed a good selection of bird seeds to the ducks and swans (and talked about the importance of not feeding bread to birds).

The walk was only an hour long, as most of the attendees were children, but we packed a lot in and everyone enjoyed it, helped by the sunshine!

I then met up with Crafty Green Boyfriend and we walked round the Bog and around Salisbury Crags. The views here of both Arthurs Seat and Edinburgh are amazing.

The Wild Day Out is now an annual event and a great family day out!

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

 

Set in the 1970s this is a novel centred on the staff of a radio station in the far north of Canada. This is the time when the future of radio was uncertain due to the rise of television and the future of all the characters feels uncertain due to the isolation and extreme conditions of where they are based as well as the shadow hanging over their careers if they are to remain in radio. At the same time the future of the entire community is uncertain due to a proposed oil pipeline that threatens to cross through the place.

The central part of the novel follows four characters (Eleanor, Gwen, Ralph and Harry) as they undertake a canoe trip following in the wake of early explorers of the area. There are some beautiful descriptions here of the natural wonders that awaken the characters to exactly what stands to be lost if the pipeline goes ahead:

'It was like witnessing the arrival of a myth: the caribou emerged from the land and belonged to it, tentative, purposeful, graceful, shy, their colours buff, brown, pale, grey..... What they were seeing was was the mass arrival of something beautifully recessive and fleeting. They could have missed it just as easily. a few hours one way or the other.'

There was a lot I liked and admired about this novel, but even though I like understated, slow moving writing, I found this was oddly too understated and underwhelming. I felt that the situation with the pipeline deserved to be treated with more emphasis, similarly the moments of peril during the canoeing trip. I wanted to feel more engagement with the plot and with the characters. So ultimately though it's an interesting novel it felt somehow unsatisfactory overall.

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay published (2007) by McClelland and Stewart using 'ancient forest friendly paper'.

Happy as Lazzaro - film review

 
 
Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) is an innocent young man growing up part of a group of indebted sharecroppers in some seemingly timeless era. They live in extreme poverty, crowded together in tiny houses and wearing old clothes. They are obviously unsatisfied with their lot but enjoy each other's company and make the most of things. As the story unfolds seemingly anachronistic details turn up - baseball caps and mobile phones and we gradually realise that this story is taking place some time after sharecropping was made illegal and that this community is being lied to by the local tobacco magnate, the Marchesa ­Alfonsina de Luna who is exploiting them.

Lazzaro is put upon by the other sharecroppers, as his sweet nature and untiring physical strength mean that he is able to keep working and will do others bidding without complaint. He somehow makes friends with Tancredi, the Marchesa's son who uses Lazzaro's innocence to plot a way out of the area.

Eventually the isolated community is exposed to the modern world with unexpected effects that leave the sharecroppers in entirely different but equally deprived circumstances and Lazzaro as much of an outsider as ever. (Saying anything more would be a real spoiler).

It's a fable about inequity, progress and power structures while also being a beautifully watchable, moving story about one innocent young man's journey through life.

Happy as Lazzaro is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday 11 April.