On Friday, the 18th, Kelly and I traveled to the Kirkland Teen Union Building to be part of the YMCA's Environmental Symposium. The event has been happening annually since 1989, it is a day to bring together high school students from local YESC clubs for a plethora of environmentally themed workshops. We joined representatives from organizations such as Outdoors for All, Cascade Bicycle Club, Washington Native Plant Society, and Cascade Land Conservancy. Workshops focused on hands-on, stop-talking-and-start-doing topics including eco-minded art, bicycle maintenance, greening the school and sustainable garden design.



Kelly and I taught two crafty workshops. During the two shorter morning sessions we led 'Fern Printing" which featured sword ferns, fabric and hammers. Ferns were collected using the 10% method (take no more than 10% of the local population) and their shape was transferred onto the fabric surface by literally smashing the chlorophyll pigment out of the ferns and into the fabric. The designs were then briefly heat-set with an iron to preserve the image.

In the afternoon we made recycled notebooks using old cereal boxes, misprinted or obsolete one-sided paper, and dental floss (NOT re-used...) Five signatures were made of 6 pages each, folded in half and sewn with floss into the binding of the cardboard cover. At the end of the workshop two of the kids presented their finished books as an example of the project to all symposium attendees.