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This is the ultimate resource for those who are as creative as they are willing to conserve. Ruby Star Wrapping inspires you to think resourceful, think reusable, think unusual when it comes to gift packaging. Raid the pantry for boxes, use old linens for pouches, and make beautiful accessories out of fabric and paper scraps-the projects here illustrate how to create beautiful, reusable packaging from the common materials in your home. With its 30 easy-to-make giftwrap patterns, this book reminds us of the wonderful creative potential inherent in the act of giving a gift. When wrapped with thought, beauty and a little ingenuity, the packaging can be a gift in itself.

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Build a honey extractor. Use top-bar hives. Bake with honey. Find your favorite honeybee. Read about all this and more with GRIT's Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey, 3rd Edition. This treasure-trove of bee knowledge has more than 75 ways to get more from your bees. Cover-to-cover, this 100-page guide includes great advice, tips, techniques, instructions, recipes and more to help you get started with beekeeping … or, if you are a seasoned beekeeper, to help you learn new tricks of the trade.

Save money while building your own beehive or honey extractor with simple materials available at your local hardware store. Read how to use a top-bar hive, a less expensive method to raising bees that will pollinate your crops and provide tasty honey fresh from the comb. Honey adds something natural, healthy and sweet to any recipe, whether it's appetizers or main dishes.

More articles include:

• Top Tips for Happy Bees: Expert advice for novice urban beekeepers.
• Bee Byproducts: Honey is but one of the items created by ever-industrious honeybees.
• Go Native with Wild Bees: The humble little orchard mason bee is the best-kept (pollinator) secret.
• The Case of the Disappearing Honeybees: What is colony collapse disorder, and what can be done?
• Winterizing Your Bees … Naturally: There may be snow on the ground and ice on the trees, but your bees are a balmy 96 degrees Fahrenheit inside their hive.
• And more!

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If you've ever thought about pursuing a self-sufficient lifestyle on your own rural homestead or survival retreat but feared you didn't have the money or skills to do it, you simply must read this book. It’s a gold mine of practical steps and instructions to take you from dreaming about an off-grid, independent lifestyle to living one!

There are hundreds of things to think about before planning and starting your new life, and this book will save you valuable time and money by steering you down productive paths and making you carefully consider others. Just some of the areas it covers include:

• 4 rules for defining your goals for your homestead or retreat
• Creative ways to find inexpensive rural property to buy
• The essential tools, vehicles and skills you will need to succeed
• 10 rules for a self-sufficient garden
• Designing the off-grid home so it's warm in winter and cool in summer
• Questions you must ask before investing in farm animals, livestock or even pets
• 9 rules for getting along with your country neighbors
• Tips for working smart, being realistic and avoiding burnout

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Long a classic within the beekeeping community, this book is one of the greatest works on the ancient art and science of beekeeping. Accompanied by 111 illustrations, it offers advice, observations and information gleaned from a half-century of beekeeping. It’s a practical, yet endlessly charming handbook on all aspects of this romantic, arcane pursuit.

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Backyard Homesteading addresses the needs of many people who want to take control of the food they eat and the products they use … even if they live in an urban or suburban house on a typical-size lot. It shows homeowners how to turn their yard into a productive and wholesome "homestead" that allows them to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and raise farm animals, including chickens and goats. Backyard Homesteading covers the laws and regulations of raising livestock in populated areas and demonstrates to readers how to use and preserve the bounty they produce.

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If you wish your yarn store had a 24-hour hotline, help is here! From needle sizes and yarn weights to dropped stitches, tight ribbing, chart reading and curling edges, veteran knitter Margaret Radcliffe is here to help you solve any knitting mystery you may encounter. Hundreds of detailed illustrations make this the one reference you'll want to keep tucked inside your knitting bag. Twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week, this book is at your service.

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Discover the pleasures of knitting in the round! Margaret Radcliffe teaches you everything you need to know to master the art of circular knitting, presenting Fair Isle, twined, helix, tubular, double knitting and other classic techniques in detailed step-by-step photographic sequences. She includes 35 demonstration projects so you can practice each technique on a mini-version of a sock, hat, bag, mitten, sweater or vest before applying it to a larger project. She also shows you how to convert any straight-needle pattern for use with circular needles. This is a complete course in one book, suitable even for beginners.

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Soft, shapely knitting meets pretty, crocheted edgings and flowers in a collection of designs guaranteed to convert the knitting-only crowd to the pleasures of crochet. A little crochet can add a lot of fun to knitted sweaters, scarves, hats, placemats - the possibilities are endless. Simple crocheting instructions get every knitter quickly up to speed with projects that will inspire them to enter the world of crocheted embellishments and trims.

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A crochet border is the perfect finishing touch on the edges of any fiber project, but creating one often means turning a corner and shaping the edging around a 90-degree angle. This isn't simple, and most edging patterns don't include specific instructions for turning the corner. Edie Eckman comes to the rescue with this collection of 150 colorful crochet frames that do supply these instructions. Color photographs by John Polak let you see the details up close. Easy, marvelous crochet borders are just around the corner!

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Discover the fun and satisfaction of spinning your own yarn! This step-by-step guide shows you how to create 80 distinctive yarns, from classics such as mohair boucle to novelty features like supercoils. Lush photographs illustrate the process of turning fleece into yarn, reveal the unique architecture of each yarn, and show exactly how to manipulate and combine fibers to get the results you want. With this must-have reference, you can create any yarn you desire.