This unprecedented period of our lives has meant, for most people, more time spent at home, starting new hobbies and catching up on all the things that they have been putting off for, well, ever! Amongst the new hobbies, we’ve seen people taking up gardening in earnest, sewing, painting, reading and so much more. If you are a newly invigorated gardener, it would be amazing if you make sure that you ‘garden for wildlife’ – get a hedgehog house, sprinkle the wildflower seeds for our pollinators, avoid chemical pesticides and leave some of those leaves in the autumn. It’s really important for our invertebrates to leave them some winter cover in the form of fallen leaves and dead plant material, although we are conditioned to try to keep our gardens neat and tidy! Moths, butterflies, spiders, snails and all sorts of other bugs overwinter under fallen leaves, so try to leave as much as possible on the ground – maybe dedicate a corner of the garden to overwintering bugs if you can!

Next up, if you are one of the new or returning sewing enthusiasts, we need your help! If you are looking for a project, we’d love you to sew us some ‘Borrow Bags’. We used to call these Boomerang Bags, based on a campaign in Australia, but have decided that ‘Borrow Bags’ is a better name for us in the UK. The idea is that we have as many shops as possible in an area taking part in the scheme. They hold a stock of the bags, which are made from any old fabric – maybe an old pair of curtains or duvet cover, or just some fabric that has been sitting in the cupboard for a while – and if a customer comes into the shop without their reusable bag they just grab a ‘borrow bag’. The next time they come into the village or town, they can just return the bag to any one of the participating shops, or they can just keep on using it. It’s a great way of cutting back the need for plastic bags and we love it!

You can find the template for these on our website here: https://finalstrawfoundation.org/get-involved/borrow-bags/ and if you would like some of the fabric labels to go on the front of the bags, please just let us know by filling out the form below and we will get some to you.

Thank you so much!