It is also an exploration of how mending can be a gently healing practice in our daily lives and a small act of rebellion in a world where many things are discarded without thought.Mending Life encourages us to cherish our things by repairing them rather than discarding them. It also encourages us to change our consumption habits so that with small mends here and there, we extend the life of our garments and other household items. This handbook is for beginners but also offers more advanced techniques to those with some experience in mending. You'll learn basic techniques such as patching, but will have options to take it a step further with decorative sashiko stitching; you'll also learn how to darn socks and mend sweaters, as well as things like a tear in a bedsheet or down jacket. And along the way, the authors share heartfelt stories about the powerful act of mending, which strengthens not only the object we are repairing, but ourselves as well. Vibrant, full-color illustrations are woven throughout the handbook. Mending Life is a timeless, practical guide to cherishing and caring for our belongings.

    This shy, snuffling, enigmatic animal has captured the imagination of children and adults for centuries – from Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tiggywinkle to Sonic the Hedgehog.Full to the brim with fascinating insights and countryside lore, The Hedgehog Handbook explores different facets of this much-admired mammal – from its wildlife habits to its literary heritage, how different cultures have viewed the hedgehog and what we can do to help preserve this icon of rural life. Fun, sweet and warm hearted, The Hedgehog Handbook is a month by month celebration of one of the countryside’s best-loved creatures. Packed with inspirational quotes, entertaining facts, folklore and literary references, it’s the perfect gift for anyone with a penchant for prickles.

    Line drawings highlight family characteristics, and plant entries discuss medicinal uses, edibility, toxicity, and look-alike plants. A standard reference at herbal and wilderness schools across the country, this resource is essential for herbalists, gardeners, and naturalists.

    Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.Projects include: How to grow food on a patio or balcony How to clean your house without toxins How to preserve food How to cook with solar energy How to divert your greywater to your garden How to choose the best homestead for you Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, smartly designed, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in Los Angeles and run the urban homestead blog www.homegrownrevolution.org.

    Boom! Plant-based eating just got a hit of bold, savory flavor! Umami Bomb brings the deep flavor of umami (the "fifth taste," along with bitter, sour, sweet, and salty) to vegetarian dishes with cheeses, miso, mushrooms, soy, and more, in 75 creative recipes.

    Tell your story as only you can, through a series of guided projects that culminate in a beautiful, autobiographical art journal worthy of passing along to future generations. Along the way, you will hone your own unique style of artful storytelling, filled with the images, colors and symbols that resonate most powerfully with you. Twenty-four inventive, step-by-step prompts help you to:Set the scene for making art--from establishing rituals that unlock creativity to curating a personal storyboard.Draw inspiration from photos, typography, sketches, childhood memories, quotes and more.Shape your story with timelines, gathered-word poetry and simple approaches to portraits.Express yourself through an exciting range of mixed-media techniques, using everything from pen and ink, markers and watercolor to image transfers, printmaking with linocuts, acrylic and collage.A book unlike any other, The Painted Art Journal is all about digging deeper, honoring your life, and coming away with a truer understanding of yourself and your art. "Each of our stories is so different, lovely and broken in its own way." --Jeanne Oliver

    Christi Johnson offers unique patterns inspired by botanicals, animals, numbers, the cosmos, earth elements, zodiac signs, and mythical beasts, for novice or well-practiced crafters to combine into talismans with personal meaning. Johnson’s folk art style is vibrant and unintimidating and provides a framework for bringing spiritual elements into physical form.

    A central figure of the Renaissance, no one had painted or drawn the world like him. Dürer drew hares and rhinoceroses in the way he painted saints and madonnas. The wing of a bird or the wing of an angel; a spider crab or a bursting star like the augury of a black hole, in Dürer's art, they were part of a connected world. Everything had meaning. But now he was in crisis. He had lost his patron, the Holy Roman Emperor. He was moorless and filled with wanderlust. In the shape of the whale, he saw his final ambition. Dürer was the first artist to truly employ the power of reproduction. He reinvented the way people looked at, and understood, art. He painted signs and wonders; comets, devils, horses, nudes, dogs, and blades of grass so accurately that even today they seem hyper-real, utterly modern images. Most startling and most modern of all, he painted himself, at every stage of his life. But his art captured more than the physical world, he also captured states of mind. Albert and the Whale explores the work of this remarkable man through a personal lens. Drawing on Philip’s experience of the natural world, and of the elements that shape our contemporary lives, from suburbia to the wide open sea, Philip will enter Dürer's time machine. Seeking his own Leviathan, Hoare help us better understand the interplay between art and our world in this sublimely seductive book.

    Small-scale, self-contained worm bins can be kept indoors, in a basement or even under the kitchen sink in an apartment — making vermicomposting a great option for city dwellers and anyone who doesn’t want or can’t have an outdoor compost pile. The fully revised 35th anniversary edition features the original’s same friendly tone, with up-to-date information on the entire process, from building or purchasing a bin (readily available at garden supply stores), maintaining the worms, and harvesting the finished compost.

    Classics of the environmental imagination—the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring—are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America’s greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of “nature” join ecologists’ memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.

    Popular kawaii artist Zainab Khan—known for her YouTube channel, Pic Candle—gives you simple step-by-step illustrations and instructions for drawing 75 supercute characters, organized into these fun categories:Adorable Food & DrinksLovable NatureCheerful Doodle MonstersEveryday CuteCharming Holiday DecorationsShe also shares captivating search-and-find puzzles that you can also use as coloring pages, and inspiration boards that show you how to give your characters different facial expressions and zany accessories. If you know Pic Candle, then you already love her cute, simple drawings, and no doubt want to doodle right along with her. Now is your chance! Thanks to this adorable crash course in doodling all things kawaii, soon you will be enhancing your notebooks, stationery, artwork, and anything else you can put a marker to—you'll just need a little help from Kawaii Doodle Class! Also available from Pic Candle’s Kawaii Doodle series, doodle to your heart’s content with:Kawaii Doodle Cuties,Kawaii Doodle World, Mini Kawaii Doodle Class, and Mini Kawaii Doodle Cuties.

    Love spans the great divide between us, linking two different species in a loving relationship. Cats understand humans – enough at least to satisfy their needs. A cat can lead you to the fridge, persuade you to change the brand of cat food, wake you up in the morning to make sure its breakfast isn’t late, and share your bed in cold nights. It may even know how to move you off the most comfortable chair. Cats are experts at twisting us around their little paws. But do you understand your cat? Probably not as well as it understands you. Cats are actually communicating to us all the time. With paws, tails, meows, whiskers and body postures, they have a vast and complex language that allows them to express their feelings quite clearly. This book will help you chat to your cat – in a language it understands. It will explain the cat’s basic instincts, the way it talks and what it means; how, what and when it learns. It will outline what a cat needs to have a happy home, and some of the common misunderstandings in the cat-human relationship to help you make your cat happy. It will outline some of the special needs of pedigree cats and of cats kept indoors. And finally, it will help you pamper your elderly cat. The happiness of your cat really matters, and it is very easy to put your cat at ease. With tips on litter training, combating aggression, kitten-rearing and making your home cat-friendly this book is an essential guide if you are thinking of adding a feline friend to your family. Celia Haddon spent 20 years as the Daily Telegraph pets columnist and pet agony aunt. She gained a first class honours degree in applied animal behaviour in 2010. Celia answers cat care questions in Your Cat magazine and can be found on David the Dogman’s programme on Talk Radio Europe – most Saturdays at 10.00am CET. She works as a cat behaviour counsellor in the Oxfordshire area and runs the website www.catexpert.co.uk . Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure, and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. The book contains lessons on each element of the exposure-aperature, shutter speed, iso-and how it relates to the other two in terms of depth of field, freezing and blurring action, and shooting in low light or at night. A section on special techniques explores such options as deliberate under- and overexposures, how to produce double exposures, bracketing, shooting the moon, and the use of filters. Understanding Exposure demonstrates that there are always creative choices about how to expose a picture-and that the decision is up to the photographer, not the camera.

    In 2003, she moved from the city to the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens and began to take walks in the countryside around her new home, photographing, collecting and drawing as she went. Each walk lifted her mood, proving to be as medicinal as any talking therapy or pharmaceutical.In Emma's hand-illustrated diary, she takes us with her as she follows the paths and trails around her cottage and further afield, sharing her nature finds and tracking the lives of local flora and fauna over the course of a year. Reflecting on how these encounters impact her mood, Emma's moving and candid account of her own struggles is a powerful testament to how reconnecting with nature may offer some answers to today's mental health epidemic. While charting her own seasonal highs and lows, she also explains the science behind such changes, calling on new research into such areas as forest bathing and the ways in which our bodies and minds respond to plants and wildlife when we venture outdoors.Written with Emma's characteristic wit and frankness, and filled with her beautiful drawings, paintings and photography, this is a truly unique book for anyone who has ever felt drawn to nature and wondered about its influence over us.

    The Fine Art of Paper Flowers is an elevated art and craft guide that features complete step-by-step instructions for over 30 of Tiffanie Turner's widely admired, unique, lifelike paper flowers and their foliage, from bougainvillea to English roses to zinnias. In the book, Turner also guides readers through making her signature giant paper peony, shares all of her secrets for special paper treatments, candy-striping, playing with color and creating botanical imperfections, and shows how to turn paper flowers into gorgeous garlands, headdresses, bouquets and more. These stunning creations can be made from simple and inexpensive materials and the book's detailed tutorials and beautiful photography make it easy to achieve dramatic and lifelike results.