Tag: charity

Kiva – Maritza in Ecuador


Image © Kiva

Do you know about Kiva? They work with microfinance institutions to provide loans to people without access to traditional banking systems. One hundred percent of your loan is sent to these partners, who administer them for you. All you need to do is decide who to support – which turns out to be the trickiest part.

The lady pictured above is Maritza, and she works as a dressmaker in Ecuador. She makes and repairs clothes, and when she doesn’t have enough sewing work coming in she sells juices. Her loan is to help her with the costs of buying haberdashery and tools.

Kiva are currently offering the opportunity to lend $25 for free, so it seemed like a perfect time to get involved. One of the aims for my mythical business (I’ll start it one day…) is to make enough money to be able to give some of it to Kiva. I have no idea when or if that might ever happen, so I figured I might as well start now. You can do the same, if you like.

(That’s an affiliate link, so don’t feel obliged to use it. I don’t think anything exciting happens to me if you do, but I will be able to see who’s signed up by means of following it.)

Vivienne Westwood for Comic Relief

Yesterday my friend Lettice blogged about this year’s Comic Relief t-shirts, designed by Vivienne Westwood. This meant that I had to get myself down to TK Maxx as soon as possible, and buy one for myself.

As a fan of Blackadder, I’d had every intention of buying the same t-shirt as Lettice, the one with Miranda Richardson as Queenie (Queen Elizabeth I) on the front. And then I saw this one, and simply couldn’t resist!

I’m rather glad that the red “noses” don’t sit in the same place on me as they do on “Costume sous Louis XVI” by Andre Deveria, and I think that after Red Nose Day I might dye the t-shirt red to make them a little less obvious. But I do like to support Comic Relief, and if I can get a Vivienne Westwood t-shirt out of it, then hooray for charitable causes!

Off to Oxfam

Off to Oxfam Reworked

One of the dangers of working in a fabric shop is that you collect fabric. Lots of fabric.

Ideas, plus staff discount, equals a Shed full of fabric that I’m probably never going to use.

So, this is the ten carrier bags that Paul and I cleared out of the Shed last week, and took down to Oxfam Reworked.

Lyndsey Clark runs the new shop in the Harris Arcade. She and a team of volunteer designers take garments that are not suitable for sale in a regular Oxfam shop, and re-work them into unique pieces of clothing.

Hopefully Lyndsey can put all this fabric to better use than leaving it piled up in a Shed for years on end.

Scarves for bees!

Bee

No, not tiny little woollies to keep them warm. Instead, Seasalt in Cornwall are holding their annual “Go Knit!” charity drive.

This year they’re collecting donations of hand knitted scarves, and all proceeds from their sale will go to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Bees and knitting are two of my passions, so obviously I’ve sent my scarf down to Cornwall. If you’d like to do the same, you can find the details here.

While I was thinking about scarves, I’ve re-listed a few on Etsy.

I have a whole pile of things that I’ve made which I haven’t got around to listing yet, so I should probably do that quite soon. Those badges and wheat bags aren’t going to sell themselves from the depths of my Shed!