Upcycle Living

The virus is showing no sign of retiring, which means, we need more reusable face masks to go around. They are especially useful for when we just need to go out to sort something out in the garden or just to receive something from the delivery guy. Can you imagine wearing a disposable face mask just for that few minutes or so then dispose of it? By the time this pandemic is over (if that's ever going to happen), we will have another pandemic of trash mountains made out of disposable face masks! This has been put aside for quite a while now as I have been rather busy for the past few months and had not much of a DIY motivation, plus, I couldn't find any suitable material such as a good, used fabric. However, while going through the chest drawers, a used pillow case caught my eye. It's tough enough, it's cotton, and it's grey - just great for the design I had in mind - an embroidered Batman logo 😁 The good news is, the old embroidery frame that has been in the family...

During these movement-controlled days, besides worrying about the shortage of surgical masks, the accumulating disposal of the one-time use masks is also a concern - not to mention the money we would have to keep spending on buying them. As I have more than usual free time on my hands, there is really no excuse why I shouldn't look into learning to make some washable reusable face masks for ourselves. After studying the structures of the existing surgical masks and what other people have shared online, I have made a few for the people around me. What I have done is to add a pocket to some, in order to slot in a filter pad if needs be. Another add-on feature is the adjustable clip-on straps so that there is no need for elastics bands over the ears. The main reason for this is that the elastic bands would dig in to the back of the ears and could be painful over time. Secondly, I am making all these with existing materials I can find in the house, and I just do not have them at hand. ...

I still remember one of my early secondary school science lab projects where we were told to bring some mung beans in to school, place them in a beaker lined with a layer of cotton then filled it with water and left it covered for a few days. When we went back to check on them, they had all sprouted into bean sprouts that we usually find in all sorts of cooking, and the looks on our little faces! Few decades later, while the whole world is in a lockdown situation due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the usually simple routine of grocery shopping became something not quite simple. Of course, thanks to the higher beings who invented the world wide web, we can now easily purchase our grocery needs online and get them delivered to our doorsteps. However, there are still things that we can't get easily, or they might be sold in large unit while we only need like a handful, such as bean sprouts. Here's when my old school project comes in handy. I am pretty sure that most domest...