The Recycle Diaries

Ask not why I've been a sluggish poster. I'm typing one-handed right now with a baby on my lap. A baby who just got three vaccines. A snuggly baby who hasn't wanted to do anything but be held and gazed upon for a month. I'm not complaining, but blogging does become difficult.

Somewhere in the last week or so I joined Freecycle.org. If you're not familiar with this, it's a network of Yahoo! groups around the country with the purpose of keeping usable but no longer wanted items out of the landfills and heading toward someone who can use them. Here's how it works:

If you have something to offer or you're looking for something, you send an e-mail to the group indicating "Offer" or "Wanted." You include what the item is and what part of town you live in. If you want something and you're willing to go anywhere in town to get it, you include "willing to travel" in the header. These e-mails go to everyone in the group either as single e-mails (which can get cumbersome) or, as I've opted, as a digest in groups of 25.

Last weekend I got rid of a ton of stuff I found while clearing out the closets in Sylvie's room pre-painting. I also got a bag of trophies for Max, who's obsessed with trophies and awards, whether or not he actually earned them. He's now made an awards display on his bookshelf that includes his chess club participation medals alongside a 4H sewing trophy from 1994.

The Indianapolis Freecycle group has about 15,000 members, so it's fairly active. I've had takers within minutes for everything I've offered. (Amazingly, I was the only one who wanted the bag of old 4H trophies, though.) I've liked everyone who's come to pick up items, and I've just ignored responses to my offerings that seemed silly or greedy. Like, for example, when I offered a never-used crib bumper pad and comforter, and someone wrote back, "Does this include the crib?" Uh, yeah, I thought I'd just throw in a crib with the bumper pad and not bother to mention it.

Anyhoo, if you have items to get rid of and want to know they'll end up with someone who can really use them, or if you'd like to see what you might get for free in your neighborhood, check out Freecycle.org.

Meanwhile, in other recycle news, I've been pining for a sturdy dining room table to replace our current vintage Heywood Wakefield number, which our family size and rowdiness has outgrown. In my head, I was picturing my friend Betsy's table, which has sturdy support on all four corners, is big enough to have a smallish dinner party, and is good-looking but not so pristine that you're afraid to do crafts on it. I hadn't found the right table, and was eyeing a $2,000 job online. So when Betsy, who lives out of state, told me about renovating her kitchen and, in the bargain, getting a new table, I asked, sadly, what she had done with her old table. She said she was going to put it on Craig's List but it was currently sitting in her basement. So I'm getting the beloved table from her. Betsy and her husband were Phil's friends from college, and he took me to meet them when he and I were "just friends" fifteen years ago, where we ate Betsy's homemade waffles and Jon's grilled steak on that table. Years later, I learned to make jewelry on that table. Max and Tommy have cavorted with Jon and Betsy's kids around that table. It's seen a lot of my life, and I love that it'll be there for more, and that Betsy can visit with it when she's in town.

Finally, here's why I'm wishing away Sylvia's baby and toddler years:

Photo from www.annamariahorner.blogspot.com

I saw this great sundress on the blog of designer Anna Maria Horner. If you can't tell, it's made from a small amount of new fabric paired with a vintage embroidered pillowcase -- the kind young ladies embroidered and crocheted for their dowries decades ago. (The post, with additional pictures, is here.) Anna Maria includes instructions for this clever reuse here. By my calculations, I have about four years to hunt up some great vintage linens before Sylvia will be pillowcase-sundress sized.

What have you kept out of a landfill lately?

One Man's Trash: Power Garage Saling

My parents were in last weekend. They live in Michigan, and Dad volunteered to come here and stain our deck. It hadn't been stained since... oh, the last time he offered to come and stain it. Since then, it's dealt with several blazing hot summers and a golf ball-sized hailstorm, so it was in need of a little TLC.

Here's something you should know about my mom: Since she's retired, she's become a crack garage saler. I mean crack. She and her best friend Gloria head out early on Thursday (the day most sales start, and the best day to scope out the good stuff) and don't return until late afternoon, often with whatever minivan they took out laden with unbelievable bargains. At the beginning of the season Mom will ask what we need, and next time I see her, she'll have it. My coffee carafe is stained and melted on one side? She's got a new one she found for $1. I think it would be cool to have a pedestal cake stand? She's got an unused one from Williams Sonoma for which she paid 50 cents. The boys and Sylvia are at least 50% clothed in garage sale finds: Ralph Lauren, Nordstrom, Baby Gap...

I don't garage sale as much as I'd like, but I love to go out when I can. And over the years I've picked up a few bargains: Unused black Doc Martens for $3.50. Shelby Foote's History of the Civil War for $2 per book. Vintage turquoise canisters that matched my (at the time) vintage turquoise kitchen. And the little wooden chairs for Sylvie that are still awaiting my gaining some painting prowess. So with Mom here on Saturday, I twisted her arm and begged her to head out with me, Tommy, and Sylvia. As you can imagine, with an infant and a toddler in tow, we didn't hit as many sales as she and Gloria typically do, but the kids were golden, and in about five sales, and spending about $32 between us, we picked up some gems.

The biggest coup, from my standpoint, was at the last sale. I'm slowly making Sylvia this hand-quilted wall hanging (from Last-Minute Quilted + Patchwork Gifts) to go over her crib:

I'd decided to get her a red gingham crib skirt to go with it, and found what I wanted at Pottery Barn Kids. But it was a bit rich for my blood -- $59 -- so I figured I'd make her one instead for about $12 or $15. I've been watching for sales on gingham, and I'd even purchased the Pottery Barn Kids matching lamp shade when it was on clearance. And guess what I found at the last garage sale? (I'm sure you're all on pins and needles.) Yep, the red gingham Pottery Barn Kids crib skirt. For $3. I also picked up a great Tommy Hilfiger bed skirt for when Sylvie is in a real bed, as it matched the twin-sized quilt I've envisioned making for her.

We passed up several bargains, including a hand-stitched vintage quilt for $25, vintage McCoy vases for $15, and a serving for eight including bakeware of Pfalzgraf pottery for $15.

Here's what we bought:

• $7 A kids bike Mom is keeping for when the grandkids visit
• $1.50 Three pieces of little boys' clothes, including like-new Levi's
• $3 Crib skirt
• $3 Bed skirt
• $1 Four painted ceramic drawer pulls that will work with Sylvie's new dresser
• $5 Handcrafted wooden box with forged iron handle made by a blacksmith in Door County, Wisconsin*
• $3 Leather Coach purse (I just learned the style is "Station Bag"; who knew?)
• $.15 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory card game that Tommy spotted
• $1 Old Ptery (from Pee-Wee's Playhouse) wind-up toy
• $1 Old-fashioned kaleidoscope that Mom bought Tommy
• $2 Plastic dart board, in the box, that Mom bought Max
• Free Vintage Santa candle that Tommy spotted and the homeowner threw in for free

* Note that I was on the fence about the handcrafted box, but when Tommy started doing the pee-pee dance and the homeowner immediately came over and offered up her bathroom, I bought the box.

As a testament to Mom's hard-driving bargain style, when Tommy, who loves the 20-year-old series Pee-Wee's Playhouse, saw the Ptery wind-up toy, I immediately snatched it up, knowing we wouldn't be seeing another any time soon. Mom saw the price and clucked her tongue, noting, "They're asking a dollar for it!" I forked over the dollar, without even trying to bargain, feeling a bit indulgent.

At this point, it looks like I'll be spending the weekend painting Sylvie's room a cream color, as the apple-green-with-purple-trim Phil painted the room six years ago isn't going to go with her new gingham digs. I'm a little sad to be spending all day Saturday in her room, though, because who knows what kind of bargains might be awaiting me?

Quick Craft: Quilty Pillows

A couple months ago I bought a collection of 16 fat quarters (18-inch-by-22-inch pieces of fabric) from Anna Maria Horner's Chocolate Lollipop fabric collection; we were doing some work with Anna Maria, and with our marketing manager expecting a daughter, I thought it would be fun to make her a baby quilt using some of Anna Maria's fabric. The quilt was only going to take three or four fat quarters, which left me with about a dozen more pieces of this gorgeous, colorful fabric. What to do?

Then I was lounging in the TV room, technically a first-floor bedroom that we made into a small family room. We live in that room. And it shows. This day I actually looked at the bedraggled pillow on the love seat, which I'd grown used to:

So I decided some of the extra fabric needed to perk up our dumpy TV room.

The fabric has big, bold patterns that would look great with a little extra texture. Because I was feeling all maternal and wanting to do some hand stitching, I made mini-quilts of the pillow tops, backing the pillow fabric with some quilt batting and a piece of muslin. Then I hand-quilted around random parts of the pattern. When each pillow top was finished, I machine-sewed three sides of the mini-quilt to the pillow back, stuffed in a 16-inch pillow form, and hand-sewed the fourth side.

I like the slight texture that the hand-quilting gave the pillow tops; you don't even really notice it, but I think it gives even more depth to this great fabric. And the hand-quilting was a relaxing way to hang out with the boys while watching Speed Racer episodes.

Cost of the project:

About $9 per pillow: $3 for the patterned fabric, $5 for the pillow form, $.50 for the muslin, and $.50 for the solid-colored backing. The quilt batting came from some batting scraps I had from other projects, so it was free.

How to make it cheaper:

• Not using specialty fabric, which is about two to four times as expensive as sale fabric at a store like JoAnn's. Or better yet, for prolific sewers with good stashes, using leftover fabric. Vintage fabric from the 60s, if you can score it at thrift stores, would make incredible floor pillows.
• Using regular pillow forms, which would have been about $2.50, rather than getting sucked into buying the "eco-form," whatever "eco" means in this case. Better yet, recovering existing throw pillows.

Random thoughts:

After extensive usability testing, Tommy certified the pillows 100% nappable: