HAVE you ever tried weaving with brambles? A word of advice if you decide to give it a go: de-thorn them properly first and have a large jar of intensive hand cream close by. Otherwise you'll end up with battle-weary hands like mine. But these were i
njuries sustained in the line of duty, part of the struggle to live a more eco-friendly life.
So the career as a hand model is over, but I now have a natty wastepaper basket woven from willow, birch, broom and bright green bramble. It's slightly lopsided and took a full day to make and, yes, as the resident doubter pointed out, I could have bought a bin for £2.99 in Ikea. But this wonky bin represents something bigger. It's a small success story on the road to self-sufficiency.
Mention self-sufficiency and most of us think of growing veg and raising chickens. But having consulted John Seymour's The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (£20, Dorling Kindersley), I realised there's a lot more to it than that. (As a quick aside, this book is rated 690 on Amazon's best-seller list. Compare that to The Holy Bible at 6,315 and The Da Vinci Code at 15,924. In the absence of cold, hard statistical evidence, I think this is enough to show that the nation has been gripped by self-sufficiency fever.)
Once you get past the chapters on potato-growing, you're led to a whole new set of challenges. How about curing and tanning? Making bricks and tiles? Or perhaps spinning wool and cotton? The gauntlet had been thrown down. The challenge was on to make stuff instead of buying it.
Which leads us back to brambles. Most people gather the fruit, but hedgerow basket-makers know it's the stalks that hold the most value. And having attended a few workshops, it's the one craft I've been vaguely able to master. Visit my humble home and you'll find baskets holding DVDs, paperwork, tangerines and remote controls. The place is slowly being transformed into an amateur basket showroom.
But has this burst of creative energy done anything to help save the planet? Well, the raw materials and production process are decidedly eco-friendly, but as to whether the baskets are fairly traded, I fear the indigenous craftsperson might grumble about the harsh conditions she was forced to work under – nowhere near enough tea and biscuits were provided.
But a few baskets aren't enough to change the world. So what else has been happening? On the food side of things, we can put bread-baking, jam-making and sloe gin-brewing on the list. (All self-indulgent rather than self-sufficient, really.) A soap-making book was discarded as it looked far too much like hard work. My knitting needles and balls of wool are hidden out of sight, waiting for the day my mum gives me a lesson. Then it'll be woolly scarves for everyone's Christmas presents. Silversmithing was ditched after two classes for being "too fiddly". A woodworking course resulted in the ugliest coffee table ever, and as for the candle-making, let's not go there except to say it ruined a perfectly good set of pots.
The latest wild goose chase is making my own clothes. Almost as bad as cutting your own hair, this will likely see me being ostracised by polite society. With a pattern, some eco-friendly material and a sewing machine, Katharine Hamnett had better watch out. I've even been researching growing organic cotton. A gardening friend tells me it's not a crop that would enjoy the Scottish climate, but a girl can dream.
And if the cotton crop doesn't work out, next stop is the potter's wheel. How hard can it be?
BE GREENERStart making stuff. The Four Winds Inspiration Centre in Edinburgh (
www.fourwindsedinburgh.org.uk) runs day-long courses in basket-weaving, paper-making, textile-weaving, felt-making and lots more.
Don't just buy a mini turbine, make one. Visit
www.scoraigwind.com for details of courses where you can learn how to build your own wind generator (although don't expect to take your work home at the end of the day – this one's a bit more labour-intensive than basket-weaving).
GLOBAL VILLAGE
Where there's muck there's brass…Recycling has never been more topical – and yet governments around the world are having to adopt incentives of all kinds to persuade people 'with not enough time on their hands' to take part.
Cash incentives are common, as described at
www.greenreview.blogspot.com: "Many areas in the United States operate so-called 'reverse vending machines' while in other areas the recycling centres pay per aluminium can and per bottle brought into the centres."
In Korea, failing to recycle can be an expensive option, as a blogger at
www.ecoworldly.com points out: "Businesses caught not recycling get hit with a hefty three-grand fine each time they don't recycle."
War is being waged on the pockets of the UK population too, though not to everyone's liking. A Tory councillor at
www.bloggingforbedford.blogspot.com complains: "Elderly residents are being threatened by the council with a fine of up to £1,000 if they continue to place the wrong rubbish in orange bins. This heavy-handed approach is over the top. We do not need a sledgehammer to crack the recycling nut."
Meanwhile, in Mexico, a self-styled eco-pioneer is adopting a different approach. Englishman Richie Sowa's spiral island (
www.spiralislanders.com) is kept afloat by hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles. It is his second island – the first was destroyed by a hurricane in 2005.
Alan ShieldsHEALTHY PLANETJOHN SMEDLEY'S name is synonymous with luxury knitwear. Now he's come over all green with his new eco-friendly T-shirt, made from fair-trade, organic Peruvian cotton. The T-shirt is then left undyed, so it's available in any colour, as long as it's natural. The best way to be. (£108 for men, £102 for women, available from April at
www.johnsmedley.co.uk)
The full article contains 1042 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
