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DIY – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for DIY, do it yourself. So I thought I would talk about a few other do it yourself projects that some friends of mine and a person I know, that they do, that they’re involved with or have been involved with in the past.

So the first one is a friend of mine named Kelly, a high school friend of mine, I’ve known her for many years. She grows her own food or grows a lot of her own food. She grows vegetables. She has a vegetable garden and I’ve seen her garden. I saw it a couple of years ago. It was quite big. She sent me a message the other day telling me that it’s, she’s…it’s becoming an edible forest.

Now edible means something you can eat. And a forest typically means a large area with a lot of trees.

So I don’t know what she meant by that. Her garden is turning into an edible forest. Maybe she has planted some trees. I don’t know. But I’m sure knowing her that it’s quite spectacular. Spectacular meaning amazing, because it was amazing when I saw it a couple of years ago.

And something else that she does, actually, is…or she’s done in the past, I should say, is she’s made clothing. She’s actually made me a couple of pieces of clothing before. So she’s quite skilled. She’s creative and those are two do it yourself projects that my friend Kelly has been involved with and is involved with still, y’know, growing her own food.

The next do it yourself project I was going to talk about is this woman that I meant a few years ago here in San Francisco at a festival. And she was selling clothing that she makes. So she makes clothing for herself, but she also has made a business doing this. This is her only source of income, the only money that she makes. It’s from this business.

And what she does is she goes into secondhand stores or stores that have used clothing. And she’ll go in and buy a bunch of used clothing and she’ll take it and wash it all and then she starts cutting it up and putting it all together into different pieces of clothing that she has designed. So if you remember from the Zero Waste commentary, I actually showed a sweater jacket that is made by this woman I’m speaking of.

Her business is called Flood Clothing. You can go check out her website on the internet. I think it’s floodclothing.com. And, yeah, she makes wonderful clothes. I love them. And I love the idea that she’s actually getting secondhand or used clothes to make new clothes. So it’s an idea of recycling. That’s what I like about it. So that’s Flood Clothing.

Another do it yourself project from a very close friend of mine and Joe’s is a guy named Wat who’s from Thailand. Now Wat makes jewelry. Not so much anymore, but he actually used to make it for a living.That was his main way of making money was making jewelry. In fact, that’s how I met him. I was living in Thailand and he was selling his jewelry on the street and I went to him and I was talking to him and I had never met anyone who had made jewelry like what I was seeing him with.

And when he told me he made it, I didn’t believe him. And he invited me to come to his house so I could see the tools that he used to make the jewelry from. So this is an example, this necklace is an example of something that he’s made. So this was actually made from scratch. Remember, made from scratch means he started from the very beginning, y’know, he had just strips, these long pieces of silver and he had some of these turquoise stones, it’s called chocolate turquoise.

I’m probably too far away for you to see it. But he bought the stones. He polished them so he made them smooth. And then he took those strips of silver and he made this. Amazing. And he made this ring which matches my necklace. And he made this ring. And he made this bracelet. He’s amazing. The bracelet and the ring also have chocolate turquoise so they match my necklace. He’s unbelievable. So that’s Wat from Thailand. Do it yourself jewelry. He makes it himself. Amazing. Unbelievable.

Another project that is something I actually did one time and that was I made soap. I made soap for Christmas presents. Y’know, I didn’t want to just go to a store and buy things for people that they might not need or might not want so I was trying to figure out something I could make and I read a little bit about making soap, and I did it. It wasn’t necessarily easy, but it did…it did come out nice, nicely done. I was successful. And I would have to say that the people I gave it to seemed to really like it.

They really appreciated it and liked it. Some people didn’t even want to use it, they didn’t want to use it as soap so what they did is, one person told me he put in his car so in the summertime when it gets hot here, his car would start getting hot and the soap would start to get hot and melt a little bit and then it would smell really good. It would make his car smell very nice because I had put these oils that smell really good, I put the oils into the soap. So his car smelled like the oils that I used.

Another thing that I currently make, I haven’t made it in a while but I have definitely made it, is hand sanitizer. So instead of going to the store and buying hand sanitizer, y’know, something you put on your hands to clean them if you’re out and you don’t have a restroom close by where you can go wash your hands, you can just use the hand sanitizer and clean them.

So I make this because a lot of the hand sanitizers in stores anyway, I don’t like the ingredients that they have in them. I don’t like what they use. For one thing, it can dry my hands out, so I found a recipe online. Remember recipe from the conversation. Remember I said a recipe is a lot of times aninstructional, it gives you instructions, it tells you how to make something, usually when you’re cooking or preparing food. But it can also be for if you’re making something else. So in this situation, I found a recipe to make hand sanitizer, so there you go.

Another do it yourself project, my friend Wat from Thailand who I mentioned, a lot of his friends also made jewelry but some of his friends made bags and shoes. So most of the bags would be made out of leather, not always, but mostly. And the shoes, some of his friends that made shoes, they would mostly be made out of leather, too. Sometimes other things, but mostly leather. And they looked really nice. Handmade.

Y’know some of the bags, the leather bags, they would take stones like these and sew into the leather.

Leather, by the way, is a material that comes from cows.

Okay, so I wanted to talk about a website that you might want to visit. It’s a website I love to go to if I’m looking for something that I’m wanting that’s handmade, for example. Let’s say I’m looking for some piece of clothing and I don’t want to go to the store and find it. I want to find something a little more unique, y’know, a little more individual, meaning I want to find something that is not, there is only maybe one that’s been made or a few that have been made, not mass-produced, not a large quantity made, and handmade, right?

So this website is called Etsy and I think, yeah, the website is Etsy.com. So not everything on the website is handmade but many, many of the things being sold are. Everything from clothing to jewelry, candles, soap, what else? Bags, I mean anything you might want and can think of that could be handmade, you could find it on this website. I love it. It’s a wonderful, wonderful website.

And I love to support people who are making things by hand, whether they’re trying to make a living doing that, y’know, that’s their main way of making money or whether it’s just a side job, y’know, a second job that they have. They’re just trying to make a little extra money doing it. I love to support that. So check it out if you’re interested, Etsy.com.

Okay, other than cooking, do you or anyone you know make anything by hand? And if so, what? What do you or the person or people you know, what do they make by hand? Share that with us on the social media site. We would love to hear about it.

Alright, that’s all for this commentary so have a good month and I’ll see you next time.