Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Some other Strange Folk

So I've been cyber-stalking some of the other vendors who will be at the Strange Folk Festival with me, the better to plan where to spend all my profits. Here are my favorite fellow recycle and especially eco-conscious artists:

  • ARTicles by Teresa: She recycles random stuff, sometimes industrial, into these cool embellishments for journals and scrapbooks--it's a sweet idea. My favorite is this paper fastener made from parts from a watch face.
  • Comforts by Ruthann: I am a sucker for hand-crafted soaps, and also unrelatedly obsessed with peppermint and eucalyptus essential oils. Yeah, this soapmaker makes handcrafted soaps with natural ingrediants, including PEPPERMINT and EUCALYPTUS essential oils. Matt insists on only using Irish Spring to counteract my soap indulgences.
  • Ettu Handmade Wearables: This concept is so cool--I'm pretty deft at recycling cast-off clothes for my own tykes, turning pants legs into jumpers, sweaters into dresses, and sleeves into pants, but Ettu has a beautiful line of T-shirts from cast-off clothing, matching colors in a creative way and often incorporating my most favorite sleeve type, the raglan. This shirt is reversible with a Christmas theme on one side and a Hannakuh theme on the other--brilliant.
  • Gnomeclothes makes reusable cotton napkins, sandwich bags, and lunch sacks. If we can afford to keep sending Will to Montessori when she starts first grade, which is unlikely, we'll probably send her lunch with her most days. How comforting to know she won't have to carry it in a Bratz lunchbox.
  • HandBEHG makes cool bags out of wool and recycled wool. She also works with roving to make felted wool balls, a project that I have been dying to do with the girls. Good thing there will be some Strange Folk vendors selling plant-dyed wool roving--goodbye, profits!
  • House of ni Lochlainn: I really like this collection of suncatchers and jewelry made from deconstructed chandeliers and vintage jewelry. I have a huge collection of vintage jewelry I scored at a garage sale that I've been meaning to post on etsy, but I just can't seem to make myself say goodbye to it.
  • Little Bird Bows: Oh, my freakin' God! A Strange Folk vendor who sews cloth diapers! Breathe calmly and repeat--"I have plenty of cloth diapers. I can sew my own cloth diapers. Also, I have plenty of cloth diapers." Goodbye, profits.
  • Revamped Fashion: Clothes for curvy girls made from recycled/repurposed materials? Okay, now I don't have any profits left. Does it count as wearing a skirt if you wear it over pants? Because I don't wear skirts, but I WANT this.
  • Did I mention that yesterday, while attempting to cook potatoes and corn on the stove while Matt's ribs (not literally, unfortunately) baked in the oven, I turned on the wrong burner and caught our last remaining oven mitt on fire? I picked it up and held it, looking at it stupidly, until the flames began to lick up to my wrist, then dropped it on the floor, dropped another dish towel on top of it, and when that promptly caught on fire as well I thought about pouring water on the whole thing, thought better of it, and instead opened the oven door and threw flaming dishtowel and oven mitt in with the ribs. Also, I might add--I have no business being in the kitchen. Anyway...how nice that Squaresville makes these cool oven mitts out of recycled denim.
  • Trash-to-Treasure Creative Recycling: I am all about heavy metal in my jewelry. Recycled soda cans? Awesome!

You're totally going to Strange Folk, right? Who's your favorite vendor?...Aw, you guys! Besides me!

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