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Sustainable and Upcycled Giveaway Hop Signups Now Open

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In celebration for 1 full year of blogging at Squishablebaby.com, Lauren at The Median Mommy and Lisa at The Squishable Baby are hosting a sustainable and upcycled giveaway hop. We have put together an amazing grand prize featuring bamboo diapers, wool longies & shorties, dryer balls, and more – valued at over $150. We are looking for participants who want to giveaway sustainable and upcycled prizes valued at $15+. Since this is a sustainable or upcycled hop, please sign-up only if you have a sustainable or upcycled item to giveaway. The item can definitely be homemade – and we welcome creativity!  

If you want to participate…

1. Please sign-up in the linky below. At the end of your blog name, please place (US, US/CAN, WW) for delivery options. 2. Fill out the Google Doc form which is located here. 3. Post the HTML and linky (contained in the google doc) on your own blog.   A week before the hop, we will email you a bit of HTML, which you can put anywhere in your post. If you have any questions, please email Lisa (before signing-up) at lisa {at} squishablebaby {dot} com Thank you for helping us make this planet a better place – one blog at a time!

Upcycled Wool SALE!

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If you haven’t guessed by now, I am the owner/creator of Median Woolworks.  Median Woolworks is an outlet for all of my handmade woolen goods, from beautiful hand-knit pieces to upcycled wool longies & shorties.  I want to share my current sale with everyone, as I’m trying to clear through some of my inventory to feature some new pieces.
Right now, I have wool soakers on sale, starting at $8 (US postage included), and longies starting at $12 (US postage included).  Once I sell through some of the soakers listed, I’ll be listing more longies.  If you’ve been curious about trying wool, or are looking to add some wool to your cloth diaper stash, you definitely need to take advantage of this sale!
Take a look around, and take advantage of the easy, secure checkout HERE.

CLOTH: Wild About Wool Giveaway

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I’m sure those of you residing in the Philadelphia area are already familiar with this amazing natural parenting and cloth diapering store, but for those of you who aren’t: meet CLOTH.

I met Angela, owner of CLOTH, while attending MommyCon in Philadelphia this past summer.  We had a wonderful conversation about…you guessed it: cloth diapers.  I made Angela promise to contact me once they began selling online [so that I could share her wonderful store with all of my non-local readers].

If you’re already familiar with CLOTH, then you know that CLOTH serves as a center for the local natural parenting community, in addition to selling organic and natural products for the entire family.  CLOTH offers childbirth classes, and has a babywearing expert in the store for four hours every Sunday.  You can find all of the events offered on CLOTH’s calendar of events HERE.

Cloth 101 classes are held regularly at CLOTH, providing information that runs the gamut from what modern cloth diapering looks like, to how to launder your cloth diapers.  CLOTH is excited to be offering a cloth diapering topic class on January 30th:  Wild About Wool Workshop.  This free workshop will cover everything from debunking common wool myths (i.e. wool is difficult to care for), to demonstrating how to wash and lanolize your wool (how awesome is that?).

To get everyone excited about wool, CLOTH is hosting a Sloomb giveaway for any in-stock wool cover or longies!  If you know wool, then you know just how amazing this giveaway is!

To enter, simply visit CLOTH’s Facebook page and select the Giveaway Tab, or enter through the Rafflecopter below:

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D.I.Y. Wool Soaker #2

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Back in April, I shared my first attempt at knitting a wool soaker, and my first time knitting from a pattern.  Unfortunately, the soaker was SO big that the only time D’s worn it was for the picture I took!  I’m hoping he’ll fit into it in the fall.  I came across another pattern that I liked and really wanted to try: The Curly Purly Soaker.

I should add a disclaimer, stating that you really must go to the Curly Purly website to see how beautiful and trim this soaker truly is, as I am a beginning knitter.  In stating that I’m a beginner, I’m also adding a disclaimer that it really shouldn’t take you the month or so it took me to knit this!  To be completely honest, I took a lot of breaks, mostly from making silly mistakes…and not catching them until hours of knitting later.  After having to unravel hours of knitting, multiple times, my frustration level was such that I had to put my knitting down and walk away.

I am, however, determined to have my son wearing lots of wool this summer, so I perservered.  While I have  the other soaker that I knitted, it’s way too big.  But, I have my Little Fawn Organics soaker, a Living Green Baby fleece soaker (I’ll talk about this one soon), this newly-knitted one, an adorable pair of wool shorties ordered from Squishable Baby, and plan to try my hand at sewing some upcycled wool soakers in the next few weeks.  Here is the finished product on Declan:

A little big, but that makes all of the trial and errors worth it, as he’ll get more wear out of it.  It really is a hot mess to look at close up, but I’m still proud that I stuck with it, and have an incredible sense of accomplishment.

I will note that I am not a great knitter, so this soaker can easily be made over the course of a week of knitting in the evenings.  I really love the patience knitting teaches me, and this project was a HUGE lesson in patience!  Also, the more mistakes I make, the more I learn.  However, my next project is going to be a super easy one, as I need a break and I need a project without a ton of instructions and techniques!

My New Favorite Thing – Review

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We are a family with sensitive skin.  I’ll be honest and say that I never really thought to do anything about it until we had a baby (for some reason, taking care of the harsh detergents and fabric softeners became important once Declan came along).  My easy fix was to simply use free and clear detergents (or detergents I know won’t irritate my husband’s skin) and to nix fabric softener altogether.  Seriously.  

I’d been hearing wool dryer balls mentioned in my cloth diaper circles, but never really explored further. The fine folks at Woolzies were kind enough to send me a box of 6 dryer balls to give a spin (tee hee hee) and review.  I’ve got to tell you, Woolzies are my new favorite thing!

There are so many great things to talk about with Woolzies before I even talk about my laundry.  Being pregnant made me really take a look at the ingredients in the items I was coming in contact with, whether ingesting or touching.  So many commonly used items contain harsh chemicals, especially detergents and fabric softeners; Woolzies dryer balls do not.  They are all natural.  As in au naturale.  No chemicals.  Hypoallergenic.  HANDMADE from New Zealand wool.  Good stuff people, good stuff.

The first thing I tried the dryer balls on was Declan’s laundry.  At this point, we still throw all of his laundry, even towels, in one load.  Because of his sensitive baby skin, we don’t use any type of fabric softener.  You can imagine the result; scratchy towels and insane static cling with his fleecy pajamas.  I was absolutely amazed by the results after drying with Woolzies.  His towels were actually soft to the touch!  His pajamas came out without a single additional item attached!  It’s winter here – I was expecting a little static cling but there was absolutely none!   

Okay, so clothes are one thing, but what about diaper laundry?  I make my own diaper detergent, so Declan’s diapers end up being a bit rough after drying.  We also don’t have a backyard that accommodates a clothes line, so all of my laundry gets run through the dryer.  And with the addition of a cloth diapered baby, that’s a lot of dryer loads.  One of Woolzies selling points is a reduction in drying time by 25%.  I was skeptical, but I was able to dry my diapers in 40 minutes, as opposed to the usual 60 minute drying time.  With Woolzies dryer balls I was able to cut 20 minutes off of my drying time – that adds up in energy savings over time.  And, not only was the drying time less, the diapers and wipes came out softer and had no static cling.  Again, I didn’t need to add any type of chemical softener, the wool dryer balls took care of it.

Folks, I am a believer.  Woolzies are now going to be my go-to gift – they’re that good.  If you’ve been thinking of trying wool dryer balls, or have been thinking about going chemical free, I urge you to make the investment.  If you go to their website, www.Woolzies.com, you can make them your go-to gift as well and take advantage of their gift wrapping options.  Even better?  Woolzies is giving away a box of 6 wool dryer balls to one lucky reader.  Complete the Rafflecopter form below to enter: