The last seventy years have brought about huge changes in the area of crafts and skills. Seventy years ago, many more of the items used in everyday life were hand made or mended and the concept of built in obsolescence would have been absurd. Today we usually buy factory made items, to use and throw away. It is generally cheaper to buy clothes than to make clothes and “ready to serve”, microwave food is a part of life. Technology allows even children to own what would once have been “little miracles” mobile phones, etc. Because of this many every day crafts and skills lave been forgotten or lost, no longer needed and yet many people, children included, value hand made items and love to learn interesting craft skills. During the project Children from Augnacliffe learnt to make rushlights by soaking stripped rushes in hot fat. The class from The Glen school discovered how to make butter in a hand churn. The Gael Scoil were shown how to darn a sock and how to make a rug from old rags. We all dicovered that re-cycling is certainly not a new idea. Click here to see how to make rushlights. Click here to see how to make a rag rug Click here to see how to darn socks click here to see how to churn butter Click here for the photopage The children also thought about what skills they had and skills that they would like to learn. Click here for a page from the project book.