We’ve had an email from Sally:

Hi. My eldest collected lots of those gel awareness bracelets when they were all the rage a few years ago but now she says she doesn’t want them any more… What can I do with them?

I imagine like other rubber-ish items (like rubber gloves), they could be used to provide extra grip on sometimes slippery or cold surfaces – like metal handles of shovels.

Is there enough give in them to be able to use them as very strong elastic bands?

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from frequent commenter Caroline:

I love your site and am always on there looking up new ideas. You have me rescuing other people’s umbrella’s from bins and saving all sorts of stuff that I previously would have thrown away. And sometimes I add my ideas but this time I am stumped.

Someone (knowing I like to reuse things) gave me a bag of yellowed cloth napkins. Some have the odd spot on that looks like the napkin served it’s duty but most just seem to have turned yellow all over. How can I reuse them? I could use them for rags but I save lots of other scraps for that. They are a sort of damask satiny material so not sure if they would dye? Could I bleach them? Would love to hear any ideas you have for reusing them.

The bleaching/dyeing question depends on what type of fabric they are – it’s best for napkins to be cotton to allow for furious washing/boiling out stains but of course that doesn’t mean that they all are. How Stuff Works has a pretty comprehensive guide to removing yellow stains from fabric but again, it depends on what type of fabric it is. Apparently the best way to identify fabric is to see how they burn – while it might be worth burning one to allow you to work with the rest, does anyone have any less destructive suggestions for finding out what fabric they are?

Any suggestions for reusing them – as things other than rags – in their current condition? I imagine the yellow is not uniform enough to pretend they’re supposed to be that colour – but any suggestions where the colour doesn’t matter?

(Oh and off topic but what the hey, frequent commenter and friend of Recycle This, Three Beautiful Things‘s Clare got married on Saturday – congrats to Clare & Nick, and I hope you have a wonderful life together. :))

Confession time: I’ve got an awful cognitive dissonance thing with buying cheap clothes – I know about the horrific conditions in sweatshops, I know how cotton production is incredibly damaging to the environment, I know how the clothes produced in sweatshops are (understandably) far from good quality and liable to fall apart quickly, I know how much energy is wasted transporting them around the world and I know that shop employees, especially in the cheapest pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap shops, are treated poorly and paid badly – and yet…

I think I got into “buy them cheap when you see them” habits as a teenager when I didn’t have a lot of money and there wasn’t quite as many cheap clothes around as there is now (those quaint days before Primark and £4 supermarket jeans) – I’d always wear black vest tops, for example, so I might as well snap them up when they’re in the sale whether I need them at that exact moment or not. That habit stuck even when I started working and had a bit more money because, well, it’s a bargain, isn’t it? who can refuse a bargain? plus, I’d still wear that black vest top at some point. Once I’d got through the other 30 in my bedroom drawer of course.
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• More and more people seem to be using the patterns from security envelopes for crafts these days – check out these kitchen roll tube & security envelope napkin holders by maya*made.
• Lindsey from SwirlyArts also uses them for gift tags and Design*sponge have turned them inside out for use as better-than-boring-white envelopes.
• Moving onto more fabricky pursuits, CraftyNest have a follow-up tutorial making headbags from the band of fabric leftover from making tank top totes.
• Speaking of using things efficiently, I like how Sadge at Firesign Farm‘s pillowcase-into-an-apron tutorial uses up every bit of the pillowcase, and little else.

With autumn slowly moving into winter, here’s some seasonal links from around the web:

• Here’s a great easy, trick for optimising compost from the fallen leaves – mow the leaves on the lawn along with the grass – the shredded leaves and grass clippings are a great greens/browns mix
• Speaking of carbon & nitrogen mixing, Throwback at Trapper Creek has written an ace article about making the most of homegrown fertilisers, specifically animal poop.
• A lot of us are thinking of planting garlic at the moment but Tomato Lady over at Little House in the Suburbs has been making paper out of the waste from last year’s braid.
• This, admittedly, uses more new resources than old – the only recycled bit is the bag – but this is a great how-to for giving a handbag solar power capability – perfect for mobile phone charging.
• And, if you’ve got a sec, vote for good friend of Recycle This’ Alison Bailey Smith’s Electra sculpture in the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce Green Art competition – Alison makes all sorts of awesome stuff out of reclaimed wire, often from old television sets. UPDATE: ooh! I completely didn’t see that another RT buddy Ann Ellis is also in the competition! Vote for her too!