Upcycled draught excluder

I made this draught excluder from fabric from a kimono that was worn for years as a dressing gown and has totally fallen apart. You may recognise the fabric from my sandwich bags (see this post!). I stuffed the draught excluder with scrap fabric (leftovers from craft projects, old socks, a pillow case that Anya our rabbit had torn apart, etc). I cut up the fabric to make the draught excluder more evenly shaped. It still looks a bit lumpy as it isn't quite finished, it needs a bit more fabric in it! However we need it already given the very cold weather we're having, so I've tied it up with the yellow rope (from a curtain tie-back that Anya had chewed to pieces, she liked chewing, did Anya!). This will be sewn in place once the draught excluder is full and at that point I will even out the stuffing. 

By the way, Blogger is being difficult at the moment, so please bear with me if posting becomes erratic!

Winter Wonderland

We had a wonderful walk along the Water of Leith today. It really is a winter wonderland at the moment, the snow is incredibly thick on the paths and in the trees. Crafty Green Boyfriend took these photos. I think the third image may be useful as a Christmas email photo!

If you do go along the Water of Leith while the snow is still around, do be careful as the paths are deep in snow (with unexpecetd holes appearing sometimes) and there are a lot of branches that are so loaded with snow that they're hanging very low over the paths.

The Sustainability Lie

Palm Oil Plantations are desperate to prove that they are environmentally friendly. The truth is that most of them are far from being so. Large palm oil companies buy up vast tracts of pristine rainforest, destroy it and plant the land with palm oil trees. In the process they destroy the livelihoods of local farmers and are driving orang utans and other rainforest species to extinction. You can find out more by watching this video The Sustainability Lie.

The problem for us as consumers is that palm oil turns up in everything - most processed foods and toiletries contain palm oil. The only way to avoid it is to be really careful what you buy and to make as much of your meals from scratch. Also use as few cosmetics and toiletries as you can and look for products that don't contain palm oil.

Patersons is a Scottish company that makes oatcakes. I discovered their oatcakes recently and noticed that they are palm oil free. It's excellent to see a company recognising the need to stop using palm oil. Paterson's are members of the UK Orang Utan Foundation and have some good information on Palm oil on their website, which you can read here. Similarly, the Handmade Oatcake company (whose oatcakes I wrote about in this review of Greener Monday) don't use palm oil.

Ultimately, there is a limit to what consumers can do and it is down to companies to genuinely ensure that they work to environmentally sustainable practices. Having said that, I'm now going to write to a toiletries company that delights in calling itself organic but uses palm oil in most of its soaps.

As ever, red tect in this post contain hyperlinks to sites where you can find out more.

Gorgie City Farm

We went to Gorgie City Farm today, partly lured by the promise of waxwings, as Deb (whose photoblog you can see here) had seen 60 or so waxwings near the farm the other day.

It had snowed last night and the farm was covered in a light dusting of white. The chickens and turkeys seemed unhappy with the cold though the pigs, Fudge the cow and Red the horse all seemed happy enough. Red actually was looking particularly well given that he's been really ill recently. The sheep were all in their shed, the black bunnies (Ebony and Sugar) were out in their enclosure, seemingly not caring about the snow, the other bunnies were in their shed and the goats seemed happy in their snowy fields. The wildlife garden was full of blue tits, long tailed tits and house sparrows while the trees bordering the farm were full of waxwings.

We were quite surprised and honoured even that Dexter the farm cat came out of his hiding place in the shrubbery to say hello to us.

We were delighted that the Farm Produce Stall was open, now selling books and bric-a-brac as well as locally grown fruit, vegetables and eggs (much of which come from the farm itself).  So we stocked up on vegetables before having lunch in the Farm Cafe, which as well as serving excellent snacks and meals, has a wildlife book, where we entered our sightings of the waxwings!

As ever, the red text in this post contains hyperlinks where you can find out more!

The Cramond Fish

It's the St Andrew's Day weekend! We had a lovely trip to Cramond today. The weather was perfect, blue skies, cold but very little wind. Crafty Green Boyfriend took this photo of the Cramond Fish sculpture (by Ronald Rae, erected 19 April 2009) that I've admired on my last few trips down to Cramond. (Slightly early for Shadow Shot Sunday!)




We also saw a good number of birds, though the tide was so far out that some of them were too far away to identify. We did however get good looks at: lapwing, oystercatcher, curlew, bar tailed godwit, dunlin, redshank and shelduck.

Remember, as ever, if the text is in red, it means you can click your way through to a web page with more information!

winter bird haiku

through the traffic noise -
the soft calls of waxwings
in the trees

Imaginary Paintings by Charles Baxter

Imaginary Paintings is the third poetry collection from Charles Baxter. He writes understated poetry that is beautifully dreamy and atmospheric and charged with significance. He is a very visual writer (as can probably be expected from the title of this collection!) and he describes nature beautifully, weaving his descriptions into the narrative of his poems.

We are driving a gray road at night,
no signs, far from friends, out in the broken
country where trees whose names we don't know
ridge marshlands, shadow on shadow. Something
moves back and forth in the trees, ruffled
and winglike, which we might see
 if we stopped. We don't. Sparrows fly up

from County Road H

I had never read anything by Baxter before, but I would certainly be interested in reading more, now!

Imaginary Paintings by Charles Baxter, published by Paris Review Editions 1989