Wigglet @beehaw.org Just a wee hobbit living in our offgrid diy hilltop cottage home 🏡
Reselling stuff gets a bit wishywashy ethically and it can be super stressful to invest in an inventory and then have to resell to get your money back (+profits). Do you have a special interest? Mine is plants so I do gardening, forestry, forestry, and horticulture jobs. I'm not great with people because I have a hard time with facial expressions and tones but it's mostly independent, just me and plants
If you don't know what to sell yet that's your first problem to sort. If you make things as a hobby you could do that, but if not you might want to see if your community has any neurospicey support groups. They can find jobs that you enjoy, provide some training, and help with the admin side of things. Places like repair cafes, small stores, quiet sorting at donation stations. Clear rules and environments with accommodations made for overstimulation or communication support.
It might end up less stressful and more fulfilling than trying to set up your own shop.
Beehaw, what is your favourite thing about your town?
Is it a favourite park or walking track? The library? Do you have a really fun festival that your community is known for? Tells us about it!
peppermint wraptop, patchwork marius froufrou shorts, and a matching bag
The top is linen and made with the (free) peppermint wraptop pattern and the shorts are made from a damaged quilt I found at a charity shop. I was also able to make a bag, pair of dungarees, and a hat from this quilt! I did add pockets to the shorts but these patterns didn't really need any altering. The bag is self drafted, just a slouchy backpack with a fron pocket and drink bottle holders.
Toy libraries, why your community needs one and some help on getting started
Every city should have a toy library. With limited space and limited income our toy library has been essential to my daughters playtime happiness. It's sustainable, teaches responsible toy care, allows her to try out new things and access the flash toys we wouldn't be able to otherwise. It also creates a sense of community from a young age. She sees her friends playing with the same truck she borrowed the week before and gets excited about taking home the castle toy she's seen. The anticipation of waiting for the next toy she's been eyeing brings Christmas-morning like joy all year round without adding to over consumption of new products that end up neglected.
Our toy library has things like dressups, large outdoor toys, play sets, baby activity centres, boardgames, and pretty much everything in between. It's been an equaliser for lower income families as their kids can have access to those motorised cars, the fancy pickler triangle/climbing sets, and name brand toys without actually having to buy them.
Definitely make a post! I want to make a mega doc with resources we can put in the group bio.
time banking, a concept based on everyone's time having equal value and something I would like to start in my community
The concept of Timebanking means no money is exchanged.
It's such a neat concept that can make certain expensive services like lawyers or therapists more accessible. I could trade a few hours gardening, sewing, cleaning, or baking, for someone else to give me a hand building a larger project. It's a beautiful way to connect a community through acts of service 🥰
Your garden looks beautiful! I would be stoked if i was your neighbour
Could also be the stress from moving and pruning. They'll probably look better after a day or two with their regular watering routine
I just have one of those times for andriod that tells me I'm done for the day. I can click add 10 minutes if I'm in the middle of something like making a post or messaging a friend but I generally just accept it and tune in again the next day. Things are more fun when they're finite
I really enjoy other social medias like tiktok and instagram but I'm really intentional about how I use them. I only consume and interact with content that brings me joy. I use it to stay in touch with friends so that means making sure I talk with them, interact with their posts, and show them some love. I don't engage with trolls or haters but i will try and have a discussion with people who seem genuinely curious, confused, or open to other view points and not hostile. I try not to spend more than an hour on the both of the consuming content a day (usually spread out while i wait for the sun, at lunch, and before bed.) I love to create silly videos about crafts, gardening, and baking so I like to post those but I find I will get sucked into scrolling and not do all the things I love if I don't set limits.
Beehaw is great because it's not so busy I have to spend a long time catching up and I have already ran into so many friendly people with similar, positive interests. I really want this space to be something that adds to my life and so far it has. I've got a new kombucha guide to try, more info on how to organise community projects, crafty friends to share projects with, and even some info on how to fix my oven! Beehaw is different than the other social medias as it's a place that's very conversation focused. Its smaller than reddit making it feel more accessible as comments don't get drowned out in busy threads. Tiktok has character limits that doesn't allow for real conversations and instagrams feed is usually outdated and full of sponsored or irrelevant content so I really just stick to stories. This is my new favourite space but I still enjoy the others for different reasons
They are an invasive pest here so I didn’t so much buy it as I did drive-by it 👀 jokes it was as humane as pest removal to save our native flora and fauna can be.
When you do, please post a write up in diy so I can build one too 🥰
I will! I have to finish up a few more projects but end of winter i should have the time to spin up all the wool i have been hoarding haha. I also have a bag of possum i want to blend in
Gorgeous colour way! I love how warm all those shade of orange look together 10/10 would make cozy socks.
I spin as well but I'm not a professional or anything, just a girl with a wheel and some woolly friends
I really love how matte/real-world this looks! It could be a character in a super cute kids show.
I really love how matte and real-world this looks. Like a wee claymation. You could make a really cute kids show with this style
I'll start putting something together this weekend and then send it through to you if that's okay? There's no deadline so no pressure but I would really appreciate all the advice you can give us!
Love the mahi! I can imagine the political climate makes se of these harder to organise than they should be but also makes their existence even more important. You have so much great advice in here I should put together a mega doc for this sub with the info in your post and all the handy links people are sharing here. Would thay be okay?
kia ora koutou! welcome everyone 🐝
So happy so many of you are also interested in finding, sharing, and discussing new ways to better our communities! I hope everyone finds inspiration here and we all get to brighten up our little corners of the world.
I would love to hear from people about what is working in your community.
What does your community have or do that you think is going well? (Maybe its a neat festival. Maybe it's a community centre like a workshop or garden. Share the ideas!)
What small things have you done that you would like to do more of? (Cleaned up rubbish on the beach? Planted some trees? Helped with a fundraiser or event? Good on you, we're all proud! Tell us so we can all get motivated to go out and do the same)
What are you wanting for your community? (Maybe its helping with food insecurity, maybe its cleaning up parks or planting trees, maybe it's better public transport)
No task is too big or too small to share, this is a place of positivity and celebration ✨️
Here's an article with links to resources on starting your own library of things. It's US centric but still has good ideas I've been stealing for getting ours organised
I made this moss rug with a punch needle last summer
It took me ages and I hated the process but I absolutely love it. It's very dense. The base fabric was a peice of curtain. The yarns are a mix of what ever I could find. I bought some new and found some 2nd hand or was given them. It took a looooooot of yarn.
I want to make more but I'll have to invest in a rug gun first 🙃
one of my favourite outfits I've made. Ladybug dungarees and a strawberry milkmaid blouse
This is probably my favourite outfit at the moment. I do have a lady bug caplet in the works but I haven't come across the perfect lining yet.
Self drafted the dungarees based on a vintage Busybodies pattern I found at the dump for some shorts. Added pockets, a bib, ruffles, straps, adjusted sizing, changed the waistband and essentially just looked at the front of the envelope for inspiration on the shorts shape.
For the blouse, I altered the milkmaid dress pattern from Lydia Naomi, adjusting fit and changing it from a side zipper to a back corset closure with inbuilt back pannel.
All the fabrics and notions are 2nd hand. The lace, strawberry fabric, blouse lining, dungaree lining and gingham fabric are from the dump. The eyelets for the corset and ribbon are from a garage sale and the ladybug denim was gifted to me by my best friend who found it at a charity shop.
I found this old diy cellphone microscope tutorial and thought I'd share it
$10 Smartphone to Digital Microscope Conversion!: The world is an interesting place, but it's fascinating up close. Through the lens of a microscope you can find details that you would otherwise never notice. But now you can. This instructable will show you how to build a stand for ab…
I've been wanting to get a proper microscope so I can do my own spore examinations to identify local fungi but it's been out of budget. This looks like a much more affordable option so now off to find some plexiglass and laser pointers at the dump.
my tunnel house mostly made from recycled materials and rubbish
My partner and I made this wee tunnel house out of dumped hothouse plastic, old vineyard netting, polypipe we found in the forest, and old fence posts. We had to buy some timber for the framing and zip ties to hold the materials together but we got to make use of so many dumped materials.
It's built to hold all my seedtrays, cuttings, seedlings, and saplings for my garden. I still need to build some shelves inside to help organise the space, tidy up thr edges, and add a door but I'm happy with it for now.
Ignore the pile of logs, they are going in the alleyway to the left and behind the tunnel house as mushroom logs.
I made this froggy coat out of old woollen blankets that i dyed green and a sheet for the lining
Sorry I don't want to come off as spammy but I also want us to have lots of fun content so more people feel encouraged to share 🥰 I could look at garden and crafty posts all day.
I wanted to give this coat a slouchy old plushtoy feel so i undersised the lining and edged it in a blanket stitch. I'm really happy with it and I wear it all the time
****noooo the cursed horizontal formatting is back! The pictures are vertical in my phone. I resaved them and double checked
**** okay i resaved them all with a 3rd party app. This is the way. Someone pleSe fix how jerboa reads photo orientation.
I am in patchwork hell but I think the finished garment will be worth it
I've been saving the scraps from everything I make and have finally gotten around to sorting and quilting them up. I think I'm going to make a dress but I might have to make bellbottoms and a bomber jacket. I'm undecided. I have some time to think on it as I have a heap of scraps to sew
my late autumn herb garden
Like any good garden it's all still a work in progress but I've had the central herb bed a few years now and I've been working on establishing some wind breaks and hedges before planting out the rest of the beds with more sensitive herbs and dye plants.
**idk why the pictures aren't showing up? I lowered the res and they show up as loaded on preview?
Last spring I inoculated my berry patch with winecaps. They fruited late summer and I'm just now getting the last of them in early winter
Not sure why the image is displaying sideways in preview? This is my first post so still figuring it all out. *I've tried adding it to the body of this post to see if that works better. Just testing things. Please ignore **okay so for anyone else encountering that issue, it reads photos taken as vertical photos as horizontal unless that photo is resaved as a whole new image.
I've been trying to maximise what I grow in my garden so I've inoculated ny berry patch beds with winecap mushrooms. They seem to like similar acidity levels and do well together so I put a mix of straw and wood chip mulch down with some spawn the start of last spring. My berries did great, the soil has never looked better, and I got a tasty bonus crop.
I've got a big pile of logs to inoculate with a couple other varties this winter and more garden beds to build in the veggie patch. I love looking at what everyone else is growing in their gardens so I'm looking forward to seeing this wee community grow 🌱
