Hello and welcome back. Join me for a cosy winter afternoon of baking and crafting. It's been very cold this past week, and after all the rain we had in December we're finally enjoying some clear days and blue skies. In today's video I spend some time practising hand carding recycled wool that I dyed with plant dyes, as I want to eventually teach myself to spin with a drop spindle to create yarn. In the kitchen, I'm making traditional German lye pretzels, and for dinner a mixed vegetable stirfry rice dish, based on the Korean dish 'bibimbap'. Whilst cooking, I share a couple of tips for reducing vegetable waste in the kitchen. I try to live a low waste lifestyle, using 'zero waste' thinking but in a flexible and realistic way.

If you'd like to try making traditional pretzels and don't know where to start, this article by King Arthur Baking is nice and thorough. If you choose to work with lye, make sure that you read about how to handle lye safely before you start. It's not difficult and doesn't need to be scary, but it's important to take safety seriously as the lye solution you use for dipping pretzels can cause skin damage if handled improperly.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog...

If you're interested in sourcing wool for crafting try searching for 'recycled wool' and 'botany lap waste' at the fibre store. I am an ethical vegan for animal welfare reasons but I choose to use secondhand wool clothes and recycled or waste wool fibres (for crafting) because they are lower impact than virgin wool and better for the environment than synthetic vegan alternatives. For me, my veganism is all about reducing or eliminating my impact on nonhuman animals in a manner which is also sustainable from an environmental perspective.

If you're new to my channel, hi, my name is Stéphanie and I live in England. Here on Eighteen and Cloudy I share peaceful 'slow living' vlogs about living a simple, sustainable, vegan lifestyle in a big city. They're unapologetically slow paced videos, and very much in touch with the passing seasons. I share stories about my organic vegetable garden it's a suburban allotment my husband and I rent from our local council on which we grow fruit, vegetables and flowers for cutting and pollinators. I also share the vegan recipes I make, and snippets of my hobbies. I love old fashioned heritage crafts like weaving, felting (with recycled wool or plant fibres), hand quilting, sewing clothes, and making soap. If any of that sounds like the sort of thing you enjoy and might like watching, take a look through my previous videos, I'd love to have you join me.

You can also find me on Instagram (the link's in my bio).

00:00 Making Genmaicha tea.
00:37 Hand carding recycled, natural plant dyed wool.
02:20 Shaping and baking traditional lye pretzels.
08:13 An update on my chillies and peppers (seedlings).
08:31 The baked pretzels.
09:12 A little bit more hand carding.
10:54 Making vegan 'bibimbap'.

#slowliving #sustainableliving #zerowaste