Skill Share, Wednesday, June 15

Join us at Wildwood Lake's North Parking Lot Pavilion with our guide, Pam Parson!

What native plants are edible? medicinal? poisonous? Which plants feed our bees, birds and butterflies? Find out--join the ramble along the lakeside!

7:00 p.m. at the Pavilion.

Worm composting video 3

Worm composting video 2

Worm composting video 1

Worm composting skill share

Don't trash those food scraps: turn them into soil! Join Scott as he shows us how to compost food scraps using red wiggler worms. He'll have a short talk and demonstration followed by lots of time for questions.

Vermiculture (worm composting) creates the best compost on earth! See how a worm bin works and where you can place it in your house.

Location is East Shore Area Library, downstairs. 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm, Thursday, May 5, 2011.

Learn to Quilt Skill Share

Working with old clothes (mostly cottons and cotton blends) we each created our first square, a "Four Patch". Using two contrasting fabrics, we cut two 4.5"x4.5" pieces of fabric for a total of four squares. Sewing these in pairs, then sewing the pairs together, our 9"x9"square was completed in less than an hour!

Our next quilting session will be Wednesday, April 27, near Mechanicsburg (place TBD), 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. All are welcome; it is never too late to learn to quilt! If you don't know how to sew, you will know how by the end of the hour.

The quilt seen is an almost completed sampler quilt that we are duplicating. Each square is different and progresses from easy to difficult, for a total of twelve squares: Four Patch, Nine Patch, Pinwheel, Waterwheel, Bright Hopes, Log Cabin, Drunkard's Path, Sweetheart, Iron Cross, Eight Pointed Star, Crazy Quilt, and Heart in Hand.

The completed squares will have "sashing" in between (the strips of fabric separating each square). Once the sashing is added, then the batting (the insulating layer) and the backing are basted (loosely stitched) to the front. Then this "sandwich" will be put in a small quilting frame for the actual quilting (sewing the sandwiched layers together in plain or fancy patterns). Once the quilting is done, the edges will be trimmed (cutting away excess fabric) and, in the last step, binding will be added on all four sides.

Our new schedule

We will be meeting the FIRST Thursday and the THIRD Wednesday of each month. There will be two planning sessions and then two skill shares, alternating between East Shore and West Shore locations.

If you would like to participate as a presenter at a skill share, please email us (TransitionHarrisburg@gmail.com) and let us know what you would like to teach, the type of location you need (i.e., kitchen, outdoor, etc.) and how many people you would like in the class.

april 20: wednesday--west shore--skill share (hand quilting)

may 5: thursday ---east shore--skill share (worm composting with Scott Mann of Mann Design)

may 18: wednesday--west shore--planning

june 2: thursday-- east shore--planning

june15: wednesday--west shore--skill share (native plants with Pam Parson)

july 7: thursday-- east shore--skill share (Square Foot Gardening with Seppi Garrett of YourGardenSolution.org/)

july 20: wednesday--west shore--planning