By François Cramer Key words: DIY, shower, solar, renewable energy, pallet, sustainability   We live in a off-grid Tiny House in Portugal, near Guarda (in the central region, close to the Spanish boarder). We have a limited amount (but clean!) of solar electricity. Given that gas and others are non-renewable resources, we decided to create a solar shower, where water is directly heated by the sun’s radiations. I inspired myself from a mix of designs I saw while travelling and ...Read more

Mara shares her passion about working with wool. In the past years I have been working with local wool. Moving countries to me, meant not only learning a new language, adapting to a new climate and swimming in different rivers. It meant discovering a new world of wool! In the east of the Netherlands I had plenty addresses of shepherds and small scale farmers providing me a steady good wool flow.   Moving to Portugal 4 years ago, I first ...Read more

I’m having a new vine support made by Steve Jones, and he’s just sent me some progress photos 🙂 I’m really happy with Steve and his work – he was super fast to respond to my initial email enquiries, incredibly helpful with his advice on helping me choose a final design from the vague idea I gave him of what I wanted. He was happy to drive over 2 hours to come see the site and give a quote, and ...Read more

Many thanks to Jackie McAvoy for sharing this great way to use some olive prunings to make a christmas (or other) decoration. To make a little olive tree: You need lots of twigs, more and less the thickness of a pencil (the branches), one straight thin twig about 25cm long (the trunk) and then, for the base, a chunkier section about 4cm wide. You also need a pair of secateurs (for the branches), a saw (for the base) and a drill ...Read more