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What could be a more peaceful protest than knitting? Kitten petting? Sitting quietly and humming to oneself? Nevertheless, one woman found her peaceful “Knit-in” demonstration abruptly ended by her arrest on July 2. Jane Palmer, of Monkton, Vermont, was arrested for trespassing on the property of Vermont Gas Systems, which is planning a 41-mile natural gas pipeline expansion, cutting through the organic farm of Palmer and her husband, Nathan, as well as across other private properties....

You are way more organized that I am, and you’ve probably taken down your Christmas tree by now. You’ve hauled it out to the backyard to make a nice wild animal habitat until next summer’s bonfire, or you’ve dumped it into a friend’s fishing pond as a nice hiding spot for the brim, or maybe, if you live down South (you haven’t done this if you live near me, where the temperature is 1 degree right now), you’ve already mulched it and laid it over the top of your garden beds....

Was it just luck? Or, does the winner of the Make Your own Candy kit from Glee Gum just somehow love candy more than the rest of us? To recap: Glee Gum is giving away the winner’s choice of any of their Make Your own Candy kits (check out my reviews of the Make Your own Gum kit, the Make Your own Gummies kit, and the Make Your own Chocolate kit)....

Olympic Paint makes a zero-VOC self-priming paint, but how does it stack up? Check out our review! House paint is a handy, affordable way to update old furniture or give your room a new look without spending too much money. But typical house paint is super stinky. Part of what you’re smelling is something called Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). VOCs are solvents used in making paint, and as the paint dries they evaporate into the air....

Fabric On Demand is another service based on the same concept. Their price is slightly higher for 100% cotton than Spoonflower, but they currently have 4 other fabric options including fleece, duck cloth, a poly/cotton broadcloth, and a micro-denier suede. You can order a free swatch sample of each. Fabric On Demand also allows you to order unlimited continuous yardage, where as Spoonflower allows up to 3 yards. Spoonflower has a Fabric Of The Week contest where users can submit their original fabric designs for the rest of the community to vote on....

We needed a way to store and display our family photos. We own an antique card catalogue. We combined the two, and came up with a card catalogue photo drawer, an accessible, out-of-the-way, organized, dust-free way to store photos. Here’s how we did it: Print photos. I ordered photos online, cropping them in my own photo editor to 3.25″x5″ (card catalogue card-sized), but printing them as 4x6s with a white border that I cut off later....

Details here, or submit a post through the submission form. Previous editions of the Carnival of Green Crafts: First Carnival of Green Crafts Second Carnival of Green Crafts at BlogHer Third Carnival of Green Crafts: Trash Into Treasure Fourth Carnival for Green Crafts at Whip Up

Got a busted bean bag? Here’s how to repair a tear and leak-proof it so it’s stronger than ever! If you’ve ever had bean bags rip open on the beach, you’ve known the eco-guilt of having 200 little bits of plastic spread out over a few square yards of sand. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ve also had plenty of time to think about how to prevent an explosion like that from ever happening again while you were down on your hands and knees picking up those bits of plastic one by one....

Are you in the process of starting a remodeling or renovation project in your home? Maybe you are sick of the plain white walls in your living room or that inefficient kitchen with very little storage space. Before starting any project large or small, we should consider the impact on the environment and our health. Paint, carpet and other materials and finishes are the leading cause of poor indoor air quality....

Selfie Saturday–[sel-fee sat-er-dey], proper noun; the day on which our writers show you what they’re up to when they’re not working for us. Hey, y’all! I’m Julie, editor and writer at Crafting a Green World. I’m the one who does all the comic book and record album craft tutorials, and the one with the photos of my two kids doing all kinds of crazy stuff like wielding power tools and pipe swords, which some of you super like to yell at me about!...

If you or someone you love also loves fidget toys, then you are going to be thrilled with this finger maze! It’s a totally silent fidget, hallelujah, that’s also super portable and delightfully fidgety. And depending on whether or not you’ve got a spare marble lying around, you can sew this finger maze entirely from stash. Here’s what you need: 1″ graph paper or ruler/stencil. I thrifted a ream of this ages ago and its been endlessly useful, but you can also simply print a 1″ graph paper pdf....

I used to dread receiving tins of cookies and fudge at the holidays, even though cookies and fudge are delicious. But those tins. Oh, those tins! You can’t recycle them. You can’t, in good conscience, throw them away. You can donate them, but frankly, the thrift stores have enough of them already. And you certainly can’t regift them, because nobody else wants them, either! Thankfully, user kittykill on Craftster has finally solved the cookie tin dilemma for everyone, for all time....

You guys came up with some incredible projects this month! Here are the top 5 projects from this month’s showcase! 1. Book Page Butterfly Garland by Posed Perfection This beautiful butterfly garland screams spring, doesn’t it? Posed Perfection took book pages and jute to create this fun garland for her spring mantle. You could even use hemp twine instead of jute. I can imagine this at an Easter family get together or even in a little girls’ room....

When you’re shopping for craft supplies, one of the easiest ways to keep it eco-friendly is to buy used rather than new. When you pick up second-hand supplies, you’re doing environmental double duty: keeping those materials out of the landfill and avoiding the impacts that come with creating new tools and supplies. Hurrah! Scouring thrift stores, estate sales, and yard sales is great for finding all kinds of reclaimed supplies from vintage buttons and beads to tools like sewing machines....

A front door is something you often take for granted. You don’t often need to think too much about it. But when my family moved into our new-to-us home, we quickly discovered that the front door was in pretty bad shape. It was made with particleboard instead of solid core, and it wasn’t energy efficient at all. We felt drafts in the entryway hall even after replacing the weather stripping....

‘Tis the season for making origami Mayflowers! Of course, when your kid makes an origami Mayflower, the one thing that she is IMMEDIATELY going to do is try to make it float. Cue the broken heart in 5, 4, 3, 2… Fortunately, there is a pretty easy way to make that paper boat float, and it also just happens to involve my favorite autumn crafting supply: melted beeswax! Melt some beeswax....

Okay, the simplest thing is the best thing nearly always in my house, but even if you generally go the elaborate route, taking a break to do a few simple tasks–say, make some easy-peasy Christmas ornaments–can actually be really refreshing. These Christmas ornaments, made from repurposed or recycled papers (like my Christmas cards), are extremely simple to make. You can freehand them or use cookie cutters, laminate them or simply sandwich cardboard in between, embellish them or leave them plain–whatever you want with whatever you have....

But alas, for my hand-sewing skills are also nothing to brag about! I can do a few decent embroidery stitches if you don’t mind that they’re not even, but I certainly wouldn’t be able to hand-stitch a rip so neatly that it would be invisible to the eye. Fortunately, with visible mending, visibility to the eye is half the fun! Not having to try to keep your sewing seamless and invisible lowers the stakes enough to make the project actually fun, especially when you consider that you can now use contrasting thread and add embellishments....

Nashua Handknits has a Natural Focus Ecologie Cotton yarn perfect for your vegan knitting needs. It is a soft, worsted-weight pima cotton that is dyed using natural materials found all across the Americas, northern Asia, Europe, India and the East Indies. The soft, natural hues are created with tree bark and various flowers. The color names suggest which ingredient was used to create the color, but you can never be sure....

Hope Spinnery has prided itself on being as eco-friendly as possible: the fiber processing mill is run completely on wind power captured on-site; all fibers are purchased locally from sustainably-dedicated Maine farms; only Earth-friendly soaps and natural dyes are used on the yarns; by-products from the spinning process are reused elsewhere at the mini-factory. The company’s yarn, made from mostly wool and alpaca, are available by skein and in 6 different patterns kits (5 hats and 1 mitten pattern to choose from)....