PEP Badge: Oddball

While at WL, I performed 3.5hrs of bookkeeping work for Stephen. Maybe Otis doesn't care if I can use a computer and do dull accounting but maybe Otis cares about helping out a friend when they're pinched for time.

This past summer, I spent 4 days dry scraping, tanning, and smoking a 12sqft sheep hide. I mounted the hide onto a frame. Scraped it for 2.5 days using a dry scraper, ulu, and pumice. Tanned it with egg yolks. Then stitched and clamped the edges together and smoked it for 6hrs with pithy bark.

7yrs ago I was very adventurous with a sewing machine: I sewed a tipi for my toddler's bed.  It took me a few weeks to acquire all of the materials. I borrowed the sewing machine from a neighbor and collected fabric scraps from many neighbors. Then it took me nearly every evening for 4 weeks to complete, over 40hrs. I struggled with tensioning issue when I transitioned between different fabric thicknesses. I'm sure it would have taken a seamstress a fraction of the time. I used spare pieces of lumber (differing cross-sectional thicknesses) and twine. I learned a lot.

I was part of a community garden and I wanted to increase involvement by getting rid of some barriers. Literally, barriers. Two members had hurt themselves badly while gardening because of tripping and falling and they each gave up gardening because of it. The square gardening approach wasn't implemented very safely. There were so many things to trip on, way too much rebar sticking up to impale someone, the irrigation was right in the narrow walkways (and this was after a prior effort to add pavers to even create walkways), the perimeter of the garden made it difficult to get to the garden, nails were sticking up, etc.

I rallied for buy-in. I sketched a new layout using oval-shaped plots along walkways near irrigation so that the hoses were easy to move and access. I got rid of the railroad ties and pavers. I added a flower and bean tipi, 3 ft hugelkultures planted with perennials including asparagus and strawberries, trellising archways, and expanded the garden area to have an additional access. I moved the topsoil from the new walkways to the garden plots and mulched the walkways with 6+inches of mulch. Each garden plot was composed of polycultures that I had started from seed or were perennials from the previous garden layout.

Over the course of a year (which happened to be the first covid summer where I delighted in having something engaging to do outside), I spent well over 500hrs reviving a community garden. I did everything from generating interest and buy-in, making plans, starting seeds, pulling out the old, installing the new, planting the polycultures, watering, teaching, and harvesting. The September bounty was abundant! The new garden club more than doubled in participants. All of the time I spent transforming this garden was a gift.

My best friend's daughter (13 years old) loves to cook and bake, she has created several amazing and creative menus for our weekly game night.

I made her a set of cotton napkins for her to use and help the table setting match her amazing food.

I spent 5.5 hrs cutting, ironing and sewing the most beautiful mitered corners. While this seems like a lot of time for cloth napkins... I'm an experienced seamstress as all of my clothes are made by me (except work jeans, socks and sweatshirts. Jeans are bought second hand, I'm hard on socks, the cost of quality sweatshirt fabic is too high)