News From the Hill

Archive for December, 2008

I read the craziest thing today - in fact I am having difficulty believing it myself. What do you think of this?

From Feb 2009 it will be illegal in America to sell hand-crafted toys or clothing for children.

I have to read that sentence a few times and I am still having trouble with it – don’t take my word for it! There are a couple of good blogs with the story detailed in them.

This site has some ideas on what we can do to try to prevent this from happening. This site sells cute kiddy things and is understandable upset about this news while this site is a business blog with a clear and succinct article on this madness.

I am guessing that affects alot of the sellers on Etsy, a lovely website which allows craftspeople to sell their own beautiful goods and leave out the middle men. Its really hard to make a living from making and selling crafts. When you consider that the crafts person has to design, source materials and create the items they sell you can imagine that they probably never really make the sort of money they deserve for the time it takes to do all that.

What worries me is that our esteemed (can you smell the sarcasm?) government often follow the ways of America, which coincidently suits the big business guy. Most business people in Ireland will admit that it is not an easy country for the really small business and not getting any easier. Quite often new regulations seems to favour the big guys.

Support handmade as long as you can – wherever you live…

Who wants some beautiful free music for Christmas?

The music website Jamendo is giving away a Christmas playlist to all who want it. It is a cool website where you can download or listen to music freely given by the performer! This is not illegally downloadable music – the performers put their music here for our listening pleasure! Some artists do accept donations but this is up to you.

There is a wonderful selection of music available and it is well worth checking out if you enjoy listening to music.

So switch off the telly, check out Jamedo and listen to some lovely tunes for free, share them around with your friends, enjoy wonderful creativity freely given.

Click here

We had a well deserved day out today. A lovely morning by the fire and then we went to a nearby town for a coffee and a sandwich and a browse through some shops. It was lovely to not be in any sort of mad panic about buying things, I bought some craft supplies for making a few Christmas decorations and looked at possible gifts but mainly we just rambled through town.

Then we went to the cinema and watched The day the Earth Stood Still. Warning - If you have not seen the movie yet then don’t read any further because I will be giving away the ending although you may have seen or read the old science fiction story anyway.  We had fun on the way home discussing what would happen if we lost all technology as the earth did in the film ending, if we had no telephones, no vehicles, no power lines transmitting energy etc.

We have become so accustomed to easily travelling about as and when we want. just think how it could take for a letter to reach friends or family you thought nothing of hopping in the car to go see?  Staying in touch these days is so easy with a text or email no matter how far away we live from each other. Thanks to computers, social networking and blogs, we even stay in touch with people we have never met in person.

How many towns, if any, would have enough food being grown locally to survive? How long would it take for local food industries to get underway?  How would people even get clean drinking water? We have lost so many of our very basic life skills. Obviously we have different set of contemporary life skills now – how to use a computer, how to walk through cities avoiding eye contact etc.

I don’t mean this as a depressing piece, we just started wondering about these things. I think it’s great that so many people are interested in learning the more basic life skills like growing food and making clothes, even if just to keep those skills alive.

Hurray for the basics…

I found this story whilst trawling the web last night, the story is also covered here- what do you think?

This story is about a group of women in India who have enough of being beaten and undefended. They have started to group together and stand up for themselves, using lathi – traditional sticks, if necessary.

For the longest time women who have been abused have not been heard, these women are making some noise!

I can certainly understand the frustration that lead to this situation of women having to go to such lengths to stand up for themselves when the authorities that are supposed to keep law and order are not to be trusted. Of course it should not be necessary for the authorities to protect women and children, women and children should not be subjected to violence but unfortunately this is not always the case.

I don’t believe in violence as a remedy which is perhaps why I found this story so interesting and thought provoking.

What do you think?

Adopted Leitrim woman Liz (as in she has adopted Leitrim!) on her blog has been encouraging people to buy Christmas gifts in their local towns which is a great idea. I would also encourage people to buy locally made or hand-made products as much as possible.

Little gifts can also have a large impact and travel far. I have been giving Christmas Tree decorations to some of the younger members of my family for some time now and they seem to really enjoy having their very own decorations to hang on the tree. I was thinking ahead though when I started doing this because I was thinking that when these young people are older and have left home they will have a lovely memory of their childhood Christmas hanging on their very own Christmas Trees.

I also enjoy making Christmas gifts for family but it can seem hard trying to find ideas, that’s where the internet is so great, it is easy to find all sorts of useful sites about crafts with lots of ideas and instructions for gift ideas.

I am a little bit behind with my hand-making list so I had better get a move on. Thanks for dropping by and having a read.

Have a lovely Friday night!