SUGARLOAF TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A woman in Columbia County is using old towels and washcloths in a unique way.
"I was raised by two people that lived through the depression," Kay Stanton said. "We didn't waste anything."
Stanton lives in Sugarloaf Township, north of Benton, where she has been repurposing things for quite some time.
"I came into a roll of snow fence years ago. That's the old wooden snow fence," Stanton said. "That was my first project."
Since then, Stanton has kept herself busy with lots of repurposing projects.
"I make rugs out of grocery store bags for camping, soap out of lard, pots out of towels," she laughed.
As someone who has found a way to repurpose everything, Stanton has found a way to repurpose washcloths and hand towels into hypertufa -- a mixture of Portland cement, peat moss, compost, and water.
Stanton combines the mixture with washcloths and towels that she picks up at the second-hand store run by her church. The end result has several uses.
"You can use them for candles, you can use them for napkins."
Stanton learned about hypertufa from the internet. She makes her creations by mixing her dry ingredients together, adding water, mixing the ingredients, and adding the towels to the mold.
She then puts a plastic bag over it to let it dry overnight. Then you remove the bag from the hypertufa and remove your new creation from the mold the next day, let it dry, and then you can paint it.
Stanton doesn't have a website where her hypertufa items are for sale, but she will have items for sale at the garden show in Eagles Mere on June 16 and the wine and cheese festival at the Orangeville Fire Company on June 23.
She can also be reached on Facebook or by email.