Does the climate and ecological crisis just feel too massive to deal with sometimes? When it all feels so overwhelming, it can be tempting to tap out completely and disengage. That’s totally understandable. However, my guest today, Beedy Parker, shows us that it is entirely possible to participate in climate related activism and action, whilst continuing to lead a happy and exciting life. From attempting to influence legislation to hemming her neighbours' trousers, Beedy has been getting stuck in since 1970. Sadly, we can’t all be Beedy, but we can all take heart and inspiration in her example. 



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The leather glove thimble is made in Japan by Little House but it probably sourced most easily via Etsy. 





Beedy Parker is a committed naturalist and social and environmental activist living in Maine, USA. 



Read more about Beedy (unfortunately this link doesn’t seem to work in Europe, frustrating I know!). 



This is another piece about Beedy. 





Beedy recommends sourcing a copy of ‘The Needleworker's Constant Companion’, first published in 1978.





I referred to an article by Christina Garton called Weaving While Neurodivergent on the Handwoven Magazine website that is a fascinating read. 



Check out Beedy’s pants bags and felted wool slippers:









Wool Yes, Plastic Fleece No By Beedy Parker, Camden, Maine



So how about wool, anyway? Here is a wonderful natural fiber that grows on the backs of gentle animals, who, Shmoo-like,* provide meat and manure, and even milk and cheese. When sheep are rotated through pastures, they improve the land and keep the farm open – and yet, the use of wool for clothing and blankets seems to be disappearing, as are the sheep. People who raise sheep in New England and around the world receive less and less money for their fleeces and must depend solely on the meat market for income. What's been happening in the world of wool?



I went on a woods hike this fall with an environmentally minded group and was surprised to see that everyone else was wearing recycled plastic fleece jackets and pullovers, the same people who, five or 10 years ago, would have been wearing beautiful hand knit sweaters and woolen Maine hunting jackets. Even their mittens and scarfs and caps were mostly synthetic. Well, I guess the weather is warmer these days, and the advertising blitz has been successful, and that "fleece" really is sometimes made of recycled plastic soda bottles, which adds a measure of virtue to the apparel, but is this really what we want to wear?



Do we want to wear "oil," with its unfortunate "cradle-to-grave" trail of pollution? Synthetics made of oil attract their relatives, oily stains and synthetic odors and solvents, the outgassing of other plastics in our environment, and these pollutants sink in and stay. To 5 reveal the true nature of plastics, try this little fiber test (cautiously): Singe a few threads of different fabrics with a lighted match. The cotton (or any vegetable fiber) gives off a pleasant wood smoke odor. Wool smells like the burning hair that it is. Synthetic plastic fabrics melt into a sticky black puddle that gives off noxious fumes, a transformation into its original self, as shocking as the melting of the witch in "The Wizard of Oz." This stuff poisons people when it is mined, when it is refined and manufactured, when it outgasses in normal use, and when it is burned in municipal waste; whereas wool comes out of the land, via photosynthesis and protein synthesis, and when we're done with it, microbes can reintegrate it into the land.



Many things have changed in our lives since the days when wool was the dominant fiber in cold weather countries. We now spend most of our time indoors and in temperature controlled cars; we hardly need coats. We don't walk much and our health suffers accordingly. In the past we trusted our wool jackets and socks that breathed when we sweat; that could shed all but a long soaking rain,