Selfsufficientish.com

Welshmum, I hope you went on the list and publicly asked her why she'd thrown the jewellery boxes away! Round here in the Welsh Borders it seems to work very well. We have Freecycle on the English side and Freegle on the Welsh side (who split off after arguements with the American organisers, and no...

You're a bit behind the times, dave45 - in recent years the Forestry Commission have been very good at planting broadleaf trees and increasing biodiversity on their land, as well as liasing with Wildlife Trusts - certainly in this area. It's the private owners who kept to the monoculture, by and lar...

Sadly, I don't have a camera at the moment. My old one started to eat batteries - I had to take the batteries completely out of the camera as soon as I'd taken a picture and they would still only last four or five shots - and I've not got round to getting a new one yet. I really just wanted to brag ...

I was rooting around in my stash cupboard when I came across a bag containing five crazy patchwork squares which I think were intended to be part of a throw for a couch. It's hard to be sure, because it must be fifteen years ago that I made them. And I don't have the couch any more. So I found some ...

You have to be incredibly disciplined to exist on benefits - I was unemployed for two years, and I'm intelligent, and can barter for some things, but it was incredibly difficult to keep going for all that time, worrying about every bill that came in. My gran used to say that poverty was not being ab...

I used to live in a cottage with soapwort in the garden - otherwise known as Bouncing Bet. We used it quite a lot - as Green Aura says, it's a prolific spreader. We found that it wasn't really powerful enough to be used for washing up, but it was an excellent shampoo. I believe the National Trust us...

Sorry about the tangent! And the confusion
(I understand that the volcano next door to Mount Unpronouncable is called Katla, which would have been much easier for the world to get their tongues round!)

My brother-in-law is an anarcho-syndicalist! He lives in a commune in Germany. Basically, the commune doesn't have a leader, but every week they have a meeting of every adult member (about 70 at the moment) with the chair revolving around every single member a week at a time. It seems to work - they...

Thanks to Nomada for posting the link to those knickers! I had a look at them, and a little think, and made up my own pattern. I cut out the pattern using the lower hem of the t-shirt as the waistband of the knickers, cut the legs to shape, and sewed the bit between the legs together, then adding a ...

That would be fine if I had any ability in woodworking at all - but I want to finish the job with all my fingers still attached!

We have a pair of scissors at work - the blades are fine, but the rubbishy plastic handle has broken. Any ideas on how we could carry on using the blades in some way?

We had Hay-on-Fire here on Hallowe'en. Over five thousand people turned up, many of them in costume, and many of them carrying their own lanterns. The morning after (and it was one of the most stunningly good firework displays I've ever seen) I found a candle lantern abandoned on the way to work. It...

We're lucky enough to live fairly close to Wiggly Wigglers. They started off doing worm composting and have branched out - they always have a stand with garden at the Hay Festival these days. They're at www.wigglywigglers.co.uk You can get seeds, garden tools, natural pest control, and all sorts of ...

Ah, happy memories!
I remember dressing as Queen of the Spiders for a Hallowe'en party in a black leotard and tights and a hand knitted grey shawl.
Of course, that was the night the police called! (I'd handed in some lost property and no-one had claimed it, so they came to tell me it was mine).

When I wanted to learn to knit, a few years ago, I sat down with the Ladybird Book of Knitting, which is aimed at seven year olds and has really clear pictures! Another good one, aimed at children, is the Usborne Guide to Knitting. Knit, purl, casting on and off, increasing and decreasing, which is ...