Rubbish reclamation | bottles to birdfeeder

Some early mornings walks yield surprising amounts of discarded treasures.  Maybe it's because it's a Monday, and the weekend meant people did a combination of cleaning (free piles) and sports fun (leaving behind clothes and water bottles).  Sunday night at the local free outdoor concert, my daughter and I walked past an orphaned Yeti bottle, sitting in the grass, far from any human beings. I'm guessing someone's going to miss it, but I rescued it to put it back in human circulation.

Monday morning, my walk home from my run with my friend took me past the basketball courts in the park; there were empty plastic water bottles all the heck over the place, and I picked up a handful of these to carry them to the recycling bins, which were across the street, so not exactly right nearby -- on the one hand, you'd think athletes who play basketball could walk across the street to toss their discards. On the other hand, I know the psychology says people don't make that kind of effort, and the city really ought to have trash bins next to the picnic tables along the side of the court where all the trash accumulates.  So, I cleaned up some of the bottles, and I also nabbed a white cotton undershirt left in the parking lot.

Further along on my way home, I picked up a black apron from the sidewalk; it had been there a few days.  I'll launder it and take it to our local soup kitchen, where it'll get put to good use.

And maybe because I'd been generating some good rubbish karma, when I passed by William's house -- the place that has the most amazing on-going free piles I've ever had the privilege of admiring -- there was a bird feeder.  Huzzah! I'd been contemplating getting a bird feeder for my back porch ever since I got back from my travels abroad; I'd even gone so far as to look on Craigslist and to do internet searches for "build your own".  And then there was a bird feeder sitting on William's Wall, just waiting for me to take it home.  Good rubbish karma, indeed!

Yeti insulated water bottle, black apron,
white undershirt, bird feeder . . . reclaimed!

Sewing Saturdays: a gathering

My mom did a great job of teaching me and my sisters useful skills: sewing, carpentry, cooking, plumbing.  Mind you, we did NOT always appreciate it at the time.  We'd ask, "Mama, can you fix my zipper/door knob/whatever?", and she'd say, "Sit down: here's the sewing machine/screwdriver/tool."  And then we'd groan inwardly, and then muddle our way through the task while she watched us struggle and offered guiding advice when we went too far astray or got too lost.

I have given my own kids intermittent repair lessons, but I didn't do as good a job at letting them struggle through the tasks on their own.  I know this because they are grown adults and still ask, "Mama, can you fix . . . ?".  

Dang it.  But fortunately, I'm still their mom even though I'm grown up, and so I decided to make a social event of these technical skills.  I declared to family and a few friends that I'm going to host "Sewing Saturdays".   Here's how I described it.

Bring things that need mending. Learn how to fix them, or just have someone else fix them.  

Bring a friend.  

I'll have some kind of bread and also veggie salad, and two sewing machines . . . [and no air conditioning, so dress accordingly].

The first-ever Sewing Saturday has come and gone.  My daughter brought over two shirts with some dissolved stitching in the arm pits, and also five pairs of jeans that have thigh holes needing patching.  Many other friends lamented they were busy this particular week but asked to be kept on the list for future events.

My daughter plunked her mending pile down on the table, and I handed the first shirt right back to her.  She groaned inwardly (maybe not so inwardly), and then muddled her way through the task while I watched her struggle and offered guiding advice when she got too lost.  (She did a great job, actually.)

I have a giant pile of denim from my brother-in-law's discarded work jeans, and my daughter and I traded off patching them; she did some muddling (but she's actually getting quite competent, she just needs encouragement), and I did some mending, too.  We made it all the way through both shirts and three of the five pairs of jeans, and we've pinned the patches on the next set of jeans so that we'll have something to do on the next Sewing Saturday, which will probably happen next month.

I declare succcess!

Rubbish Rescue --> fixing a Free-Pile folding chair for good juju

I don't need a folding chair -- and in fact, I didn't keep this folding chair. But I fixed it because (a) it was easy for me to do, and (b) I figured it would bring me a bit of good Free-Pile juju.  

There's a guy down the road that has one of the most amazingly lovely free piles.  When he moved into his fixer-upper of a house two or three years ago, it was stuffed to the gills with the previous owner's accumulated stuff.  William started putting all sorts of this stuff out on the lawn at the edge of his house.  What emerged was amazing combinations of antique trash and treasures.

That corner where he lived became its own minor version of a tourist attraction for a few months, as people figured out how to make use of what they found there on the lawn, and then William replaced what had been taken with new-to-see assorted marvels.

Meanwhile, he slowly rehabbed the property.  He added a knee-high retaining wall along the boundary of his lawn, made of scavenged stones, and he did all the work himself.  I'd stop and chat as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The house is in pretty darn good shape now, and the wall around his lawn only occasionally has goodies to sift through.  But many of the pedestrians along the street keep an eye on the property, partly out of habit and partly out of respect for his propensity to surprise us with the latest unearthed goodie.

For a couple of days, I'd pass by the folding chair he had out, not paying it particular attention because --- as I noted above --- I don't really need one.  I was surprised it didn't get snapped up, though, and so one day I looked a bit more closely and saw that the strap of one armrest had been cut or ripped.

The armrest (lower left) doesn't have a strap connecting
it to the plastic guide (upper right).

Well, I could fix that.  And I did; I brought the chair home, used my mighty little seam ripper to remove the old snippet of a strap, dug through my nylon strap pile to find a suitably sized replacement, sewed that on with a bit of quick sewing machine work, and Done.

Now the armrest attaches to the support pole.

I carried the chair right back to William's corner, where it had waited patiently for a new owner. The next day when I returned to take a photo of the whole chair, it was gone.  Success.  

I hope whoever got this chair uses it in good health and happiness.  

Rubbish Rescue --> a Cutting board rack

It started with two small pieces of scrap wood: one, I know, came from my son's broken and then disassembled former bed frame, and the other from some random rescued thing I took apart.  I added in a dowel rod that I'd bought new for a project that didn't need as many dowel rods that I'd bought. 

I used a circular saw to trim down the bed frame piece, and also to cut the dowel rod into 5 equal sections. Then my sander.  Then my drill with the 1/2'' drill bit -- by clamping the two scraps of wood together and drilling holes in both at the same time, I didn't have to measure where they holes go in order to get things to line up.  Then a mallet to pound the dowel pieces into the holes.

Now our cutting boards stand up, and they have air underneath so they drain better. 

I figured this one was going to be a trial run: I'd see how it worked, figure out what I needed to adjust, and then design another one that worked better.  But instead, it seems to be exactly what we were looking for all these years. It frees up counter space (our boards had been lying flat in this corner), and allows damp boards to dry. This cutting board rack isn't going to win design aesthetic awards, but -- wow -- do we love it. 

So, not bad for a project that took 5 years of procrastination followed by ten minutes of sawing and sanding! 

Making my 80's costume happen

 My daughter invited me to an 80's themed theater event, and said we should dress the part. I was like, what does it mean to dress 80s?  I know I lived through it and all, but I'm not very fashion aware -- really, quite the opposite.

She told me, "leg warmers".  That's when I remembered seeing the movie Flashdance with my friends.  The song goes, "Take your passion; make it happen" -- but I thought the song went "Take your pants off; make it happen" (which also fit the plot of the movie, really).  My friends understandably ribbed me for that, so the movie sticks in my mind.

I never owned leg warmers that I recall, so I didn't happen to have an old pair lying around.  But I do have lots of hand-me-up clothes that other folks gift me.  One sweater was getting so loose around the neck, plus it had a stain, that I'd been thinking about turning it into rags.  Instead, I turned it into my 80's costume.

I cut off the sleeves and used rubber bands to help hold them up on my legs.  The top looked a bit like a work-out sweatshirt.  Add a neon-hued under shirt and some kicks that I'd rescued from the side of the road, plus a head band that was pretending to be a sweat band, and I had my costume.  

Take your sweater, and Make it happen!

Rescued Rainment

Each of these pieces of clothing had been abandoned on the ground somewhere.  

I walked past the winter coat pictured on the left and also the "Los Angeles 79" hoodie many times; they'd been rained on repeatedly before I decided their owners would never return to reclaim them.  The UnderArmor compression shirt was of more recent abandonment, but  it was in the middle of a grassy field where industrial lawnmowers threatened it if it hung out there much longer.  The grey hoodie was one my husband found by the side of an empty road and brought home as a gift to me.  (I tell people that he must truly love me if he's willing to bring me a gift that costs $0; most people I know would shudder at the thought, despite knowing me so well).

Aside from needing a good laundering, they were all in perfect condition.  Now they're laundered.  I'll release some of them back into the world via "Free" boxes and/or thrift shop donations.  The hoodie my husband gifted me, I'm keeping; it's become one of my favorites to cuddle up in.

A new leash on life . . .

I've got this song running through my head -- not your usual Christmas song, but a Muppets song.  Apparently, none of my kids nor my husband had ever seen The Muppet Movie, [how?! how!?], so this past Wednesday, when our family Advent calendar flipped open to reveal "Movie Night", we had to rectify that.   

Side note: my running buddy June was raised Mennonite; she says that the Muppet Show was the only show, besides Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons, that her family watched.  Her dad, however, didn't like the Muppet Show, because it was too irreverent.  Be warned. 

My husband was mostly impressed by the guest cameos: Steve Martin, Orson Welles, Richard Pryor, etc etc.   My daughter said, "I kind of recognize some of those people. but they look so much younger than I think of them."  Well, yess.

For me, though, I was almost disappointed by my favorite song from the movie, which comes when Kermit and Ralph commiserate over women.  [Of whom there are disappointingly few in the movie, I must admit].  I was disappointed because for years -- decades even -- I've been singing the song to myself, and then in the movie they left some of my favorite verses out!   

How could that happen?  How could I know more words than Kermit and Ralph did?  It turns out that the sound track I'd listened to while growing up came from the British version of the movie, not the American. 

Through the miracle of the internet, I tracked it down:  "This is a rare clip from the 97-minute UK cut of 'The Muppet Movie', shown only in British theatres in 1979 and once on VHS. This extended scene features additional lyrics not included in the US/international cut." (Available here, with a list of glowing and bubbly compliments.  I'm not the only fan of this song.)

Just feast your ears on these awesome lyrics:

 A collie that's classy,  A laddie needs a lassie;

A lover and wife . .  . gives you a new leash on life!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.  I'm going to take myself for a walk now.