Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt June

The Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt is an idea started by Kirst and this month hosted by Emma.


inspiration

After starting my own business I've noticed how empowering it is to be able to make your own choices. This Gandhi quote can be applied to so many things in your life, from big to small. The big thing for me is trying to make the world a fairer place by buying and selling fair trade, and giving at least a few women in Bangladesh the means to build themselves a life.

Image by PrintsRUS via etsy


something i made

I haven't been making a lot lately, well I have but that's not ready to show you just yet. Let's just say you'll have a clearer idea of what Tulsi does soon. I did make this ingenious contruction to warm a stroopwaffel when your cup is too big.

summer

Summer = gardening to me. Either in our own garden, or some guerilla gardening in the neighbourhood. This is our public community garden, I love it for the fact that we have much more flowers and bees in our neighbourhood now. And of course you get to meet your neighbours.

 



















holidays

I'm spoiled for choice here, as a lot of my photos have been taken on holiday.  This has really been one of my favourite moments ever though, November in Dartmoor. God it was cold!

motifs: childhood 

This blanket used to come with us on holidays when I was a child, and it still does! Love the purple seventies flowers.

Weekword: scent

Weekword this week is hosted by Emma. When I saw her post about scent I felt inspired, so thought I'd join in!

Scent to me can be like instant time travel. The smells of raspberries can take me right back to my childhood, picking raspberries is my mum's garden. She had this wonderful raspberry hedge.

Also perfume, when I wear Cacharel's Lou Lou, I feel 15 again. I loved it and saved and saved until I could buy a bottle.

Then there's jasmine. Jasmine isn't time travel to me, but actual travel. All of a sudden I'm in Indonesia again, drinking jasmine tea. You'll find the Indonesian jasmine (melati) growing everywhere in the country, and you can buy jasmine iced tea (teh botol) on every street corner. We must have drunk litres of it when we were there!
The first time I drank teh botol was with my dad, as we used to visit the yearly Indonesian fair in Den Haag. I was so impressed with the taste and scent of it, that when I got to Indonesia 20 years later it was one of the first things I sought to taste. Wonderful, I might go and make some now actually as I still have some of the tea stashed away...

Peonies

The peonies are almost in bloom again. Here's a wonderful photo my mum has taken years ago.

World Day against Child Labour

Today is World Day against Child Labour, a subject close to my heart. First and foremost I'd like to make clear that I think it's most important that children are able to be children, to be able to play and learn. But how do we get there?

In Bangladesh child labour unfortunately is very common. The sad truth is that lots of families can't survive without a child's income. They garment industry in Bangladesh is huge, a lot of our clothes from western brands are manufactured there. These garment factories producing for western brands offer relatively good working conditions, and child labour is uncommon. We as western consumers don't want our clothes produced by children, and rightly so. So these factories are regularly checked and provide decent conditions.

Unfortunately they pay their workers a pittance, women garment industry workers in Bangladesh earn $48 a month, for working 60 hours a week. That is not enough to live on. This means their children are forced to work in the factories that produce for the local market, working under considerably worse conditions.

A solution to this problem is paying more. We pay more for our clothes, the big brands pay more for production, and the factories pay more to their worker. But the problem lies with us, as we don't want to pay more, we want to pay less. We'll need to realise if we want to stop child labour we have to pay a fair price for the work of their parents. We'll have to trade fair and buy fair trade.

If you're interested to read more about this subject, take a look here:
The Wallstreet Journal. H&M want better working condition for Bangladeshi suppliers.
The Guardian. Tackling the root causes of child labour.

Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt May

The Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt is an idea started by Kirst and this month hosted by Emma.

Inspiration
Picking spring flowers on a impromptu bike ride after work.

Something I made
Salad with rucola, lentils and couscous, tasted good!

Urban
Dhaka, urban city to the max, on a quiet day ;)

Transport
Sometimes it doesn't work like it should...

Motifs: Graffiti
Or street art at least. The rickshaw wallahs of Dhaka take great pride in decorating their rickshaws.

The red shoes

Yesterday there were two little girls selling the contents of their attic on the street (it was Queens day here, so not as weird as it sounds). Almost everthing was already sold, but they had some shoes left on their their blanket, looking a bit lost. It just looked so cute.

Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt April

Good evening from an orange filled The Netherlands, as some of you know we celebrate Queens Day today. I've waited with my entry for the crafty photo scavenger hunt until today, because it's a day filled with photo opportunities! Luckily today was also a beautiful sunny and warm spring day.

The crafty photo scavenger hunt is an idea started by Kirst and this month hosted by Timballoo.

inspiration
70's brown and orange, I'm starting to see the appeal more and more. My mum used to have a vase like the small brown one in the foreground, wonder where that went?

something i made
There was a hole in my cardi, so I fixed it. It looks pretty good for someone who can't sew.

 










easter
We don't celebrate easter. But I did wander into a church today, to check out their charity sales. The candles looked beautiful.

re-purpose
I'm in doubt what photo to post here, so I'll post two! The first was a nice stool I saw today. We've recently had a few trees cut down at the allotment, so this might be an idea for some of the wood. But then photo itself is not very good.

I was originally planning to post this photo of a man using an old cement bag to carry things around on his bike. Cement bags are widely used in Bangladesh as carrier bags.

motif: symmetry

This is actually an old photo taken two years ago in Indonesia, I use it as a desktop photo at work. The sun shining through these bricks always cheers me up.