Design stuff

Survival tip of the day: the Tactical Adventure Medical Preparedness Outdoors Necessity (T.A.M.P.O.N.).

(headsup Instapundit).
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or how about a backpack bed? made in Australia by volunteers for their homeless. Slideshow link

made of modern materials, not canvas that gets wet easily, and it doesn't contain PVC, so you won't be spreading that chemical into the environment.

hmm..wonder if it will work with a hammock: If you get floods you need to be lifted above the ground...
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ArtForTheHousewives has a whole bunch of container growing tips here,

I am always amused at these "new" ideas: we recycle most of our stuff here: plastic bottles get used for carrying liquids, , as funnels, to store small items etc. and glass jars are also cleaned and used for food storage. Starting plants in old containers is nothing new here.
 everything gets reused: except for plastic bags, which are a problem (some cities are starting to ban them because they get discarded and clog up the drainage, leading to flooding being worse during typhoon season).

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Doug Johnson, a designer has rediscovered a type of basket weaving that could be duplicated by the modern printers.

By tweaking the method--he sews the cotton rope together with colored thread on his vintage Singer--he’s able to produce bags and other vessels that look like they’ve got one handle in the old world and one in the new: part Navajo, part Tommy Hilfiger.

hmm...the link is to the coil technique of making pottery, not baskets...

Actually, I am familiar with the technique, which was used by many of our African women...the containers are even water tight. (No, I don't know about the Navajo part...didn't work there long enough).

However, you don't "sew" them together on the side after wrapping the rope around: You get a heavy rope/twine/fibrous branch/root and you wrap the thread around it a few times, and then you take a needle and connect the wrapped twine to the previous layer. Repeat. Repeat...etc.

Sister Euphrasia taught me how the baskets were mad: how to make the twine out of a plant that was probably sissel. She found it wild in the woods, cut off a few leaves, and then pounded them until the fibers appeared, and then she "twined" it with her hand. This was used for the wrapping, but I'm not sure what she used for the fibrous twig for the cordage.

Here is a co-op that sells similar baskets from Swaziland basketFromAfrica

here is a photo of a Sissal bowl from Swaziland. from their website.

Each fiber is harvested, dried, hand dyed, dried again, then rolled against the weaver's leg until the perfect thread is drawn out. An average of 30-40 hours per basket makes these one of the most labor intensive of all African baskets for their size.

As a bowl gets larger, it takes more and more time to weave because the coils on each row become much longer as the bowl flares upwards and outwards. So adding 1 row at the top of the basket, could be equivalent to weaving 5-7 rows or more in the base of the basket. This is the reason the larger baskets are more unusual, take so much more time to create and are only done by masterweavers.

I'm glad that they are keeping the crafts alive, because even when I was there, they often used nylon thread to wrap around old plastic bags to make baskets.

hey: Maybe that's how we can recycle our platic bags...

Radmegan has instructions on  using the wrap technique to recycle plastic bags, although she uses the bags as the thread, so her bags won't be very strong. But it gives you a good idea of the wrap basket technique.