market cancelled and market that is never cancelled

dang it! this nasty weather has forced the christmas market in naples to be cancelled. let’s hope that the weather will cooperate to hold it another day soon, although i doubt it will.

fortunately there is an artisan market that never closes, not even for the worst blizzard. and that would be etsy. i recently mentioned how i opened my own etsy store (even if there are a lot of things still missing from it… we all know how hard it is to organize things at christmas time!) but today let’s not talk about me, but about KATIA! katia is the blogger behind mille idee in una tazza, a very cool blog about ecological crafts and other things. and katia also has a nice etsy store. she proposed we do an etsy exchange. in exchange for a regular cloth pad, she sent me a pair of glass earrings, a ring made from a button from the 70s and a bird for the christmas tree made out of recuperated materials. all packed up very nicely (and in an empty kinder egg, what i’m stocking up on for my advent calendar, which i’ll write about soon) with a very nice card. i say i got the better end of the deal!

i like all three things, but the one i love the most (and has gotten me the most comments) is the ring. it’s so simple, but absolutely perfect. i’m already thinking about ordering some more rings from her after christmas! so, i suggest that all you out there go pop in katia’s store, as well as other etsy stores, and you’ll find all sorts of wonderful gift ideas, and not only for christmas. thanks again, katia!

market madness!!

…and just in time for christmas. i know i sure haven’t managed to make all the gifts i wanted for my near and dear ones. thank goodness for markets with artisans selling their handmade goods!!

soooo, this weekend i will be participating in not one, but TWO markets:

SATURDAY 19 DECEMBER in NAPLES there will be design, trash ‘n’ jewels’ x-mas market, a market of unique handmade objects, perfect for christmas gifts. it will be open from 12 noon til 11:30 pm at La Controra, p.tta trinità alla cesarea, 231 (off of via salvator rosa). you can also get there with the metro (who in the world wants to get stuck in christmas shopping traffic?!). there’s a facebook event and a website with more info.

SUNDAY 20 DECEMBER at the LAGO D’AVERNO for the “circle of peace” meditation, there will be the market ragnatela*autoproduzioni, fiera mercato delle soluzioni immaginarie…senza mercanti (market of imaginary solutions…without merchants), at the giardino dell’orco. not only artisan-made objects, but also self-certified organic produce and other foods. it will be at the giardino dell’orco (the opposite side of the lake from the temple) from 12 noon until sunset. you can get here easily with the cumana train (get out at lucrino then walk 10 minutes), leave those cars at home! for more information, look here.

ecological surfing

i’d never thought about polluting with internet or search engines. then i saw one of my facebook friends had posted a link to ecosia. every search made on this search engine saves about 2 square meters of rainforest. how does it work? i’ll let them tell you about it directly:

We earn money from clicks on the sponsored links, which are displayed next to the generic search results. Each click on one of these sponsored links generates a few cents of revenue for us. About two percent of the search requests end up with a click on a sponsored link.

The exact amount we earn depends a lot on the country. Searches from the United States generated a lot more revenue than searches in markets with less developed online advertising markets like India or Brazil. On international average we currently earn 0.13 Euro Cent per search.

We donate at least 80 percent of this money to rainforest protection project run by the WWF. The project is located in the Juruena national park. It costs only 5 Euro to protect an entire hectare of rainforest there. So based on our average earnings per search, we can save about two square meters for each search you do.

there’s a video that explains how it works very clearly. you can use it as a regular search engine or install the firefox add-on which lets you see not only how many square meters you’ve saved , but also how many have been saved by everyone. i installed it right away, you should too!

christmas stockings

one of the nice things about having two cultures in one house is that you celebrate a lot more often. not only are there different holidays to celebrate, but the ones in common are often celebrated in different ways. for example, christmas. in the USA, kids leave a glass of milk and a plate of cookies out on christmas eve and hang a stocking on the fireplace. that way santa claus can come down the chimney, fill up the stockings, leave gifts under the tree and rest a moment with the milk and cookies (i always wondered, though, how santa had enough time to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, too). then back up the chimney and on to the next house.

but the idea of santa claus started up pretty recently here in italy (there wasn’t any santa when my husband was little) and he does different things here. he doesn’t fill up any stockings, so kids don’t leave them out for him. however the “befana,” an old witch, fills up stockings the eve of epiphany a couple of weeks after christmas (the befana doesn’t exist in the US). it’s sometimes a bit complicated to try to explain these differences to my daughter without ruining the season’s magic. but in the end, she’s just happy to have her stocking filled up two times every year instead of just one. lucky kids who get to celebrate the traditions of two different cultures!

let me get to the point. very often in the united states, kids have special christmas stockings. the kids of my generation in my family had stockings that my aunt made for us, all of them similar but with different pictures. she made them out of felt and decorated with ribbons, sequins, lace, bells, etc. we always loved our special stockings. (mine is in the photo above)

unfortunately, my aunt died of cancer when i was at university and so when my daughter was born, i decided to continue the tradition for our family’s new generation. but modernizing them a little. instead of felt, i used fleece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my brother and sister and cousins were really happy and touched to see the new stockings like the ones my aunt had made and the kids, never having met my aunt, really liked the colors and pictures made just for them. and, from what they tell me, the kids still get excited every year when it’s time to take out the stockings again.

it took me a while to make them, but i’m happy with the way they turned out. i admit that i copied the pictures from the internet. i looked for specific types of designs in google images and enlarged them on the computer to get them to the right size for the stockings. then i traced the images onto used printer paper from the monitor, cut out each part and traced the shapes onto the fleece.

 

 

 

 

i also changed the loops to hang them. the ones my aunt made were out of felt, like the rest of the stockings, and with time and the weight inside the stockings, they came apart. so i reinforced my fleece loops with ribbon sewn to them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

here’s the stocking i made for my little girl. it doesn’t look particularly complicated, but it was the one that took me the most time in the end. it was pretty tough to cut those snowflakes out.

 

 

 

 

and finally, i couldn’t leave my poor dear husband without a stocking, so i made one for him too.

next year i’ll be back to stocking making for my cousin’s expected arrival and i hope to be able to make another one for an arrival in my house, too. keep your fingers crossed!

etsy and market

in a few days will be the monthly market “ragnatela” which i started participating in last month. the “market of imaginary solutions” sells organic and artisan-made local products. come on sunday december 6 from 10 am til sunset at fiume di pietra on mount vesuvius (a gorgeous place, take the road to vesuvius from herculaneum, the entrance is across the street from the entrance to the observatory). at 6 pm the documentary film "l’aeroporto fantasma" will be screened with the participation of the director giuseppe ferrara. i’ll be there with my stand. come say hi!

what’s more, i recently opened a new online store at etsy. unlike my online store at cloth pad shop, i’ll be selling all of my products, so my cloth sanitary items but also other things that I make. i still haven’t been able to list everything (i’ve been incredibly busy), but bit by bit i’ll get everything on there! as it is a site based in the USA, the prices are in US dollars, so they seem high compared to my euro prices, but they’re really the same with the official currency conversion. come take a look!

for those who don’t know etsy (it still isn’t very well-known in italy), it’s a sort of ebay, but with set prices and all the items are hand made by the sellers. there are some amazing things sold on etsy, so it can get pretty dangerous to go browsing because you want to buy everything you see!

blog barter

alessia from alessia, scrap & craft had a great idea, to hold a blog barter. she offers something she made each month to someone who offers her something homemade. you need to leave a comment with a picture of whatever you’re offering her on her post. then she chooses whatever she likes the most.

alessia invited me to offer her something. i already have an idea for next time, but i just can’t make it in time for the deadline this time around.  so i decided to just offer her a couple of the cloth hygienic items i sell, that is two cloth menstrual pads (machine washable), made by yours truly. there is:

one pantyliner made with cotton flannel on top, cotton terry inside and waterproof PUL underneath… 

 

 

…and one regular pad, with wicking microfleece on top (which remains dry), cotton terry inside and waterproof PUL underneath.

i hope she likes them!

and happy thanksgiving to everyone out there!

blog candy extravaganza!

every so often i participate in blog candies, but the other day i decided to go wild with them. one of these days i’ll set up my own. but for now i’ll just have to be happy signing up for these ones:

mercatino dei piccoli: they’re giving away one of two very cute stuffed animals. enter by november 23

 

 

mille idee in una tazza: this isn’t a candy, but an initiative for creative recycling ideas. enter by november 25

 

 

 

life, craftiness and everything else gives away one of these very fun mice every month! enter by the end of each month

 

 

 

mondoCiPi: a birthday candy with the best rules i’ve heard yet! enter by the end of november

 

 

 

the crafty pad: a package with stamps, ribbon, paper, etc. cool! enter by december 4

 

 

 

 

roberta filava filava: a diy candy with a kit for making her very cool pins. enter by december 8

 

 

 

bim bum beta: birthday candy, a carry case for paintbrushes, pens, crochet or knitting needles or whatever else (very versatile!), enter by december 17, 9:34 pm (italian time!)

 

 

 

 ork’idea atelier: cristina is holding an eclectic competition. you need to send her a comment or email with an original idea on how to use her hearts made from old socks and other clothes. enter by december 8 

 

another very interesting initiative:  cristina from ork’idea atelier has an etsy shop, c.s. ethic design. she sells objects handmade from 100% recycled/recuperated materials, gorgeous. through january 30 she will donate a portion of her profit to a project helping out ex child soldiers. go check it out!

 

this candy from recuperando just ended, unfortunately, but i still suggest you go look at her blog. it’s full of amazing ideas!