Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Trash to... real food, clothing and housing.

Hillary Found an amazing story from NPR about a foundation in Manilla that teaches women to make jewelry out of trash. Please be warned that the story is a truthful depiction of the rather disturbing circumstances that some people live in in manila. Here is a link to the story and below are Hillary's comments:

The idea that there is a whole culture in Manila based around trash because they can't make enough money for basic needs like food, clothing and shelter saddens me. Any project, or foundation that can use the local culture to help people have a better life is amazing. The Phillipine Christian foundation saw a culture built on trash and scavenging and helped build a real business around it so that women could earn a living and help feed their families something other than scraps. This is brilliant, and, more importantly improves the quality of life for many families in an area where most people have no permanent address, minimal earnings, no food and nothing that many of us take for granted. Amazing.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

What We've been up to

Hillary Has been very busy and wanted to share with you some of the great things she has been up to recently.
Last year, Hillary wrote about attending Play on Con 2, a local gaming convention. This year, much of June and July was spent getting ready for, attending and recovering from, Play on Con 3.
While there, Hillary, ran a game of "The Great Dalmuti" (similar to scum or presidents), complete with hats to denote the different ranks. Hillary also helped create a photo journal of the event and participated in several events such as live action wiz war and the Dominion Tournament. When she wasn't preparing for the con, or participating in events, she was busy writing about it for Meepletown.com, her husband's board gaming blog.

In the midst of all the fun and craziness, she had the pleasure of talking to Thandor, a Chainmaille artist from Atlanta. His work is gorgeous, he is very friendly, he is quite knowledgeable, and his work ranges from simply beautiful (such as his bracelets under the "lineup section of his site") to very complex and technical pieces (such as the wings under the "projects" section of his site.

Hillary actually likes his work so much, that she purchase a necklace from him last year and a new pendant to go with it this year. She says that it is one of her favorite necklaces, and this is a big compliment coming from Hillary, because she is very particular about style and craftsmanship, since she can make most of her own jewelry.


As you can see, The work is very clean, which leads to a gorgeous finished product. Hillary Hopes to see Thandor again next year so she can get even more of his lovely work for her collection.

We hope you enjoyed hearing about Play on Con half as much as we enjoyed attending, and remember, you never have to pay to get in to the vendor room, so you can go meet Thandor and the other talented vendors without even paying! We hope to see you there next year, and we'll see you back here on the blog in a couple of weeks. You can look forward to more exciting projects and regular updates!