Dementia dolls and eco-bricks

Dementia doll by Jenny Stacy

I love sweetpeas. This year the garden  is still giving me flowers after 3 weeks.

Regular readers will remember me making lots of very simple dolls with different colourful fabrics front and back, like the one above. Some sold but I still have lots left so I thought I'd turn them into dementia dolls.

With this one I sewed on pompom braid and a length of wide velvet ribbon. Then I knitted a piece with tails and loops and sewed that on too.  Now there are three areas that invite fiddling with. Four if you include the dolls' dreadlocks! And the doll is also the right size to be a 'baby' to be cuddled.

It is stuffed with toy stuffing but I am wondering if I could use soft plastic packaging instead. Up until now I have been putting this into large plastic bottles as 'eco bricks.'

My local authority East Hampshire District Council doesn't recycle food packaging which is really annoying. So for some time I have been puting all that soft plastic packaging into large empty water bottles. The problem is that lots of people are doing the same thing but there are very few places in the country that can actually use these eco-bricks.

 A local school used to take them to build an allotment but they have enough now. So where to put all these eco-bricks? The bloke I asked at the recycling centre hadn't heard of eco-bricks but he did tell me to bring them along so he could see what they looked like...

Everyone wants to do their bit to save the planet right now but sometimes it is not obvious what to do for the best.

Some people pick up litter whenever they see it.

When I visited my daughter in London this week I noticed a sign which said that people who leave their rubbish on the pavement or 'fly tippers' can be fined up to £50,000 !!! Can you imagine that actually being enforceable?