Organic Needle

It’s in the Bag: Stitching Towards the Holidays While Taming the Jabba

Posted by organicneedle in blogtastic, recycling, sewing

Yes…I have officially made September the month to nag everyone into clearing up those “gonna do” sewing projects. Today let’s focus on two easy and extremely practical project…bags.

I have the world’s easiest little T-shirt recycler project. Take an old T-shirt & sew the bottom and the sleeves shut. Cut a little hole behind the neckband large enough to thread a hanger through and waaaaaaalaaaaaaaaa. You have just created the perfect storage bag for plastic bags, rags, clothespins, pantyhose, or whatever unmentionables you need to organize in your closet. (We’re not here to judge people…just to sew. Okay…you can judge a little.) Anyone can do this one…and it is really practical and helps to get those closets organized. And it doesn’t even have to be pretty. Definitely on the Cat-With-Narcolepsy Skill Level.

Now if you are looking for something to venture outside the house with…let’s talk shopping bags. Since I design and sew mainly by trial and error, error, and then more error…and not so much with those pesky easy to follow patterns, I have opted to take my usual cheap way out and find other people’s really cool easy to follow instructions and steal…I mean highlight them.

Some of the clearest instructions I have found were over at Wild Onion. She shows you how to convert a T-shirt into a bag with some great, very clear, step by step photos. A little more challenging than the closet hanger bag…but still very doable.

Gosh golly…I bet you could find some really cool vintage T-shirts at a yard sale or consignment shop and sew together a set or two for your friends for the holidays. A set with their favorite bands? Come on…who wouldn’t want the complete Def Leopard shopping set? How about making a pile of bags and using them as your gift bags for your other homemade goods? Pour some sugar on your friends and get sewing. Where on earth did I put my good hair-teasing comb?

If You Use Some of My Garbage…I’ll Use Some of Yours

Posted by organicneedle in csa, plastic, recycling

A few weeks back I inquired within my CSA as to whether or not “our” farm would take back the containers that they use for berries and little tomatoes. Didn’t hear back from them or the farm so I assumed they could not for some sanitation reasons. Most of the containers were that green paper material which I could recycle in the paper bin but some were the plastic kind that can’t be recycled here in the city…so I was a little bummed. Fast forward a few weeks and guess what I saw at the CSA distribution? A little reuse rainbow…a sign saying the farmer will indeed take back the containers AND the farm that distributes eggs will take ANY egg cartons. How cool is that? I had been recycling the new paper Trader Joe egg cartons, but a reuse trumps a recycle, no?

This also inspired me to think about “garbage” I could reuse from other people. Like bread bags. I have run out of my old stash and was contemplating buying a box of zippies but realized that there must be a world of bread bags hitting the trash right in my very building. Most of my friends do not make their own bread. (Yes…they can still be my friends even though they don’t bake bread. Hard as it is…I find ways to love them anyway.)


What can you pick from your friend’s trash? (And no…that is not a euphemism. Get your mind out of the gutter and into the dumpster people!)

Put a Cork in it…And Make it a Real Cork Please.

Posted by organicneedle in handmade holidays, projects, recycling

Yesterday I reminded all of you that homemade holidays take a little bit of planning if you want to avoid giving everyone those, albeit lovely, last minute ziti noodle on a string necklaces. They really do go with everything, but perhaps a flavored vinegar, vodka or oil may say you actually care about someone a little better. (Or maybe the ziti necklace says it all.)

In the comments of yesterday Chile brought up an excellent question…how do we get the greenest supplies possible to store our delectables?

Bottles…any bottle that can be sterilized and corked, lidded, or capped can be used for bottling your creations. The aesthetics are up to you. Obviously clear bottles allow you to see the infusing herbs inside a vinegar or vodka, but darker bottles would be better suited for preserving the longevity of oils…and also if what you have created is tastier than it is pretty.

Where to get bottles…If you drink wine or use vinegar you probably have a few good bottles kicking around the ol’ recycly bin already. If not, start snooping through your friends’ and neighbors’ bins. Put the word out with your peeps as to what you need so they remember to put the goods aside for you. If you want something a bit fancier, check thrift stores, yard sales, free cycle, etc.

If you don’t find what you are looking for try buying recycled glass from SKS.., which makes basic medicinal looking bottles or Traders & Company which have a more artsy, and expensive, flair. Who wouldn’t love homemade raspberry vodka in this bottle with these recycled shot glasses?

Corking Your Hole…Once you have picked your vessel you will need to be sure to have an airtight seal. The SKS bottles come with screw on caps which may or may not be to your liking depending on whether or not you are making an edible or a smearable. The logical choice for hole plugging is a cork. A REAL CORK! Responsible cork foresting is actually a good thing for people, animals, and the environment. If you are crazy about corks read more here. To buy corks check The Widget Company or Crazy Corks.

As far as what to put in your bottle.. oils, vinegar, and vodka can pretty much be infused with anything. I have linked to the basics…but be creative. Use your garden and your local markets as your inspiration. Feel free to leave a list of your favorite flavors in the comments to give others some ideas. If you make a raspberry mint infused vodka and you aren’t sure it tastes quite right, send it to me and I will taste it for you. Over and over and over. I can do that for you. I’m such a giver.

Vodka Infusion Basics

Vinegar & Oil Infusion Basics

Sewing the Eco-Lunch: Taming the Sewing Jabba II

Posted by organicneedle in family, product review, recycling, sewing

Oh…the lunch box. A few years ago I did my research and found that Thermos brand was supposed to be one of the less chemically brands of soft lunch boxes. Now they are not so sure. The new word on the street is they are made with PVC and perhaps, just maybe, a tad bit of lead. So…back to the research lab for a PVC, phthalate, and lead free cold food transporter. This is what I found. (Crocodile Creek has a ton of really cute designs and can be found on Amazon for about $15 and free shipping.)
Yes…yes…there is a sewing project in here somewhere. Now that I have managed to find a perfectly normal looking lunch box that won’t actually poison my child, how can I manage to further ecogeek up his day? By rummaging my fabric pile and creating reusable everything. The Green Peace bag I didn’t make, but did add little handles out of leftover elastic banding to make it easier for my son to carry. Once my lunch bag - now his snack bag. The Buzz Lightyear pretzel/cracker pouch, a basic drawstring bag, was the pant leg of a pair of unsaveable PJs. The Spider Man cookie pouch was from torn swimming shorts. (I use the ready made pocket for Mama Notes. Yes…I am totally one of those moms.) No I won’t be selling any of these on Etsy because of copyrite laws, blah blah blah. The blue and orange sandwich bags are just basic hemmed scrap squares sewn together. I did not even line these with any sort of plastic or vinyl because I made enough to be able to machine wash them after each use. So far they have done their job as sandwich wranglers quite well. I will also be making some cloth napkins out of a few old plaid dress shirts. You could use the same basic square napkins to wrap up sandwiches and double as placemats.

Again…as with the Back Up Band…these are all really easy, beginner level sewing projects that anyone can do and everyone has the materials cluttering up the house. If you, or your kids, take your lunch, take a moment and see what disposables you could replace with cotton reusables. Even if you are all thumbs when it comes to sewing you may just impress yourself & your offspring with what you create. Just try not to sew yourself to the actual lunch box. That might not be quite as impressive.

Organicizing My Makeup: Physicians Formula Organic Wear Concealers

Posted by organicneedle in blogtastic, organics, plastic, product review, recycling

Even the Needle needs a wee bit of help looking breathtaking each day. So why not try to add a little organicizing to the ol’ makeup bag? So…I picked up Physicians Formula Organic Wear 100% Natural Origin Concealers in Fair & Green. (No I am not the swamp thing. Green covers red which I tend to get around my nose during the colder weather…when I hear Santa needs help with his sleigh.)

Packaging…Let’s start with the positive. The outer packaging is just paper. With the rather clever construction they completely eliminated the need for the clam shell type covering most makeup uses. Sweet. Hopefully that alone will inspire redesigns for all makeup…organic or not. The inner packaging is better…but the makeup is still essentially in a plastic tube with paper covering. I guess they could use glass…but maybe that would be a safety issue since you are cramming it onto your face.

Price…6.95 each. That seems to be on par with other concealers.

Now for the not so nicey nice.

Smell…yes it is important since I wear the green on my snout. Rancid olive oil. I now know why they add so much fragrance to makeup. Holy skunk butt. If this were the only issue I would just plug my nose and soldier on…but…keep reading.

Ingredients…better…but wait. Sounds really good at first: organic olive oil, organic soybean oil, beeswax, avocado oil….and then a big list of flowers. I’m feeling girly just looking at the list. But right at the end they slip in some other familiar names that don’t sound so tasty: talc, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, which is rust, no? Do these qualify as natural? I guess they do occur naturally. So does snail slime…doesn’t mean I want some on my face.

Performance…Now for the big So What…does it work? Depends what you mean by work. First the makeup was so thick and sticky you couldn’t apply it like a stick…which is kind of the point of a concealer STICK. Both of them broke when I tried. I was able to use a lipstick brush to apply it and it managed to conceal. Amazing!

So…although I give Physicians Formula big props for reinventing the makeup packaging…they have a lot of work to do in the actual makeup department. Bottom line: Swampy no recommend.

Just for the Record…Buying a Shirt, Wearing It, Stinking It Up, and Returning It Is Not, I Repeat NOT a Method of Consumer Reduction. So Knock It Off Stinkpit!

Posted by organicneedle in random rants, recycling

If you are looking for designs, chat about greening the house, or just delightful banter of any kind…today is not your day. Pure 100% rant day. Over the weekend I was granted a few precious hours to shop…by myself…for a few dressier outfits for my upcoming vacation. Something really fancy…like with no snot or peanut butter streaks. Now my choices are fairly limited by my Ban on the Gap and a rather short shopping attention span. (Yeah, the ban is STILL on baby!) I like Ann Taylor. They have a lot of petites that still look like adult clothes and, in general, I find their clothes hold up pretty well both in style and construction. (Plus wooden hangers :).) Background story: awhile back I bought a nice little top at the same store. Brought it home. Thought about how cute I looked for a few hours. Tried it on with some pants and suddenly caught a whiff of foul play. The shirt was preBOed! Uggggggg. Not normal human BO either…swampthing level BO. The kind of BO that makes you beg for the sweet smell of a potato so rotten it has liquified. But it was REALLY cute so I soldiered on and washed it with my crappy eco detergent…twice. Life continued. (I have yet to find an eco detergent that actually cleans…but that is for a whole other rant day.) Now flash forward to this weekends outing…found a couple of cute shirts on the sale rack. My size and a good price. Versatile. Perfect. But oh no…the smell. The same wretched BO. Some woman in my neighborhood, the same size, with the same obvious good taste is buying my potential clothes stinking them up and returning them! SO NOT COOL STINKPIT! Despite whatever stink haze has permeated your brain & caused you to believe this is a valid way of reducing your consumer goods tally…it is so not OKAY. Watch out…I’ll be sniffing for you.

Calling all Teetotalers! Organic Needle Give Away…with a Teeeny-Weeeny Clause

Posted by organicneedle in organic cotton, organicneedle, organicneedle bags, projects, recycling, sewing

About gosh darn time, hey? Well here they are. My little beauties. At first I was just going to go with the single cup version…but then a voice inside my head pointed out that it is summer and people are drinking ice tea by the jug. (Okay the voice in my head is Burban Mom…she likes to hang out there…what can I do….I have had worse head house guests….and who can complain when one actually provides design ideas?) So…after scratching my head for a good long while…I knew just what to do…sorta. (Why yes…the Sun Tea Bag does have a striking resemblance to my small produce bag.)

The tag on the single cup version is actually a tagua nut…what the hell is a tagua nut you ask?

Well…until recently I didn’t know either so don’t feel out of the loop…well…for that anyway. Tagua is a nut that is similar to ivory in look and feel…so in addition to providing a reason to keep the rain forest, and a financial opportunity for the local artists, they can also replace the evils of ivory. Hard not to want to incorporate all that, huh? Actually the woman who represents the company who creates my organic cotton cording sent me some samples to see what I thought and if I could incorporate them into my designs.The chips I was sent instantly made me think of tea tags…don’t ask why. They could be worn for jewelry…but that’s not my racket people. I’m a bag lady…so this explains the birth of the organic cotton reusable teabag with a tagua nut tag.

Now Burban will be getting the sun tea bag to give a good work over since it was really her idea I’m stealing. If Jabster is still out there somewhere she would be getting one of the reusable single bags, if she drinks tea, since she is the one who found me someone to actually make me organic cotton cording. That leaves 2, yes two single tea bags that need guinea pigs to check them out. Now…I will expect some feedback on how well they work…so don’t take one and stuff it in your drawer for prosperity sake. Things I want to know…

1. Ease of use. Is the opening large enough? Does it close tightly enough to keep the leaves in?

2. Is it big enough? (Single Tea Bag= 2×3, Sun Tea Bag 7×7) I want it large enough to allow the leaves to brew properly, but small enough that it can go in a dainty cup or even a narrow thermos.

3. Ease of cleaning. Do the leaves rinse easily out? (You may have to turn it inside out to get the little ones.)

4. Cuteness. Yes…It is important.

Now here is the million dollar question for us all to work on collectively as a class. I need to create a counterweight for the sun tea bag…the thing that keeps the tea bag from falling into the jar/jug and causing you to go elbow deep in everyone’s tea. The tagua slices are too small…and adding bunch would drive up the cost to an impractical level. I would love to use a recycled item…or better yet design it in a way that a common household recycled item could be used…hence the buyer creates their own weight…and saves something from the landfill. Do you think people would see this as a copout or a clever waste reducer? Creating your own counterweight would also keep the price lower and reduce shipping weight.

If you are interested in being my little piglets, just leave a comment. I will post next Monday who is getting a bag. Hopefully in a month…after we have a little trial time/you guys do all my work for me…they will be up on Etsy in all their perfected glory.

(Oh…and I’m thinking of calling them Big Dipper and Little Dipper.)

19 Uses for a Yogurt Tub or 19 Ways I Can Justify NOT Making My Own

Posted by organicneedle in plastic, recycling

***I totally planned on debuting my new reusable organic cotton teabag designs today but had a weeeeee bit of trouble uploading the photos. Designer…yes. Techie…not so much. I promise to have it up and the give-away over the 3-day weekend.***

Now, without further ado, my lame replacement post:

No…I do not make my own yogurt…and probably won’t until I gain some space. Which should be in a mere decade or so. Yes…I know it is soooooooo easy…..and suuuuuuuuuuuuch a waste saver….but I suuuuuuuck and won’t be doing it. (Have you picked up on the theme of the week?) Instead…I’ve comprised a list [rationalization] of all the things we have used the big yogurt tubbies for. (See I’m not totally evil; I don’t buy the individual yogurts.) (And yes…I totally stole the idea for this post from Cheap Like Me. I mean I was inspired by her bloggy goodness.)

1: Compost scrap holder ( The lids totally keep the flies and their evilness out….evil, evil flies)

2: Dead battery holder (We use mostly rechargeables…but there are always a few of the reg. kicking around.)

3: Dead CFL container

4: Lego sorter (For about 15.6 seconds)

5: Laundry soap toter

6: Tubby toy (AKA Brother Scream Makers…just fill and dump over unsuspecting bath mate and let the good times roll.)

7: Slip bucket (pottery thing)

8: Glaze bucket (Again, pottery thing)

9: Nut storage (Keep it clean people!)

10:Tanagram storage (I have a very nerdy household.)

11: Screw sorter (See # 9)

12: Oil bottle bottom (Keeps a ring from forming on the wood in the cabinet. MIL idea.)

13: Paintbrush holder for munchkins (Kids, not the donuts)

14: Temporary bug house (Don’t worry; we let them out if they have amused us properly.)

15: Vinegar death trap for evil fruit flies (1 part vinegar+ 1 part soap= Every Part Fly DOOOOOOOMMMM)

16: Instant pudding shaker (No explanation needed…I hope.)

17: Salad dressing shaker (Hell…I guess you could shake anything that will fit in there.)

18: Dirt scooper for potting plants

19: Large wine cup for a really clumsy guest (You know who you are.)

So yes…buying yogurt means buying evil #5 containers which are not even recycled here in NY. But…in all honesty…I can’t tell you I’ve ever thrown one out before many reuses. And this is just a list of how WE have actually used them…and we’re not that smart…I’m sure there are a kajillion more. And if all of you yogurt makers out there try to get me… I’ll just build a yogurt tubby fortress and send my guards after you, who will all be wearing yogurt tubby armor…of course. Okay…there may be a few design flaws to work out.

Oh…and the Week of Shame Continues… for Me and for Coke

Posted by organicneedle in plastic, random rants, recycling

For the most part Ol’ Needly here tries to live a healthy life. I eat my veggies & my spawn provide me adequate exercise by method of chaos. But I have a very unhealthy secret habit. (No…not the wine…that I have convinced myself is good.) The dirty secret: Diet Coke. There I have said it people. I LOVE DIET COKE. Anything nutritional about it? Nope. Is it even in the neutral zone? Nope. Most likely carcinogenic joy in a can. Can I put an environmental spin on it? Well…I do buy it in recyclable cans in a recyclable box? But yes…it is trucked from Satan’s factory who knows how many miles and weighs a butt-load. Not to mention that Coke, the company, is, well…kind of evil. Melissa at Better Living reminded us of their whole India debacle as a prime example. Not to mention the whole bottled water brainwash thing . And I’m sure Beth could add some terrific fun facts to that end of the discussion. So plenty O’ reasons to kick its can.

So…I’m doing it. I’m kicking the evil little monkey off my back and switching to home brewed ice tea. (Now I’m sure someone will write soon about what my tea consumption is doing to the world…and I’m sure there is some evil involved as there is with anything tasty.) Local…no…not so much. Organic…not as of yet but the company I order my loose tea from, Tealuxe, does offer a few varieties. Fair labor…again I’m researching for future purchases. Patience people!

**Coming soon to a blog near you…well…this blog….I will reveal my new tea bag designs and there will be a little give-away …with the usual guinea pig clause attached of course. You gotta work for it if you want to get your hands on a little of the Needle’s goods.**

Now that I have successfully weened myself from one giant conglomerate, the Gap , I guess life would be far too easy without taking on another mega-giant. Now…trying to track down everything Coke owns may prove to be a bit more of a challenge. The list reads like a phone book…literally hundreds of names. All variations of Coke, of course, Dasani, Minute-Maid, VitaminWater, Fanta, Sprite, Nestea, & Barq’s are just the US biggies.  And Bacardi Mixers?!?! The playground is going to be just a tad duller this summer with just tea in Mama’s “happy” sippy cup.

Oh…and the Failure Continues.

Posted by organicneedle in family, green cleaning, recycling

The hubby has revolted. Now Mr. Needle is fair game for most of my ideas…for a time. And some he has even grown to love…like the Burt’s shampoo bar. Others…are facing a dim future. Yesterday he informed me that after a week of the 7th Generation paper…he was feeling a need to go back to the good stuff. (Meanwhile there is an entire case of 7th is sitting in the hall closet…shhhhhhhhh.) I really thought I would crack first. After going through natural childbirth twice I kinda felt like my nether regions should be pampered forever, carried about on a silk pillow by several attendants….and yet I have not been crying at the bowl. I must have developed that infamous perineal callus of the eco wipers. Obviously I still have a case…literally a case to work with. Maybe he too will develop a quality ass scab.

*Oh and did I mention he went out and bought like 10 Scotchbrit sponges! He claims the avocado netting isn’t working. Good thing he is cute or the worms might be getting a little protein in their bin.