For my next trick...

ALDI just recently came to Texas and although sticking a quarter in the cart and buying your own bags is somewhat...weird...I really love this store!  The closest one to me is really nice and clean and man, those checkers are FAAAAST.  For Texans, this is a totally new way of shopping and it's apparently hard to adjust.  My husband went in while I sat in the car one day (I had a cold and was doing my duty by keeping away from the general public) and I watched about 5 women get downright flustered at the lady attending the carts when I could see her explaining that you put a quarter in the cart to unlock it.  Oh, they got M-A-D, MAD.  I watched angry women walk away and thought that was probably for the best.  They would have blown their tops when they checked out and had to buy their own bags.  Speaking of...

I've bought SOOOO many ALDI bags now that I think I have enough to make a couple of market bags!!!  LOOKIE...

Cut off the top and bottom of bag with rotary cutter.

Start folding like this until you get almost all the way up.  ALMOST.

See that little part at the top?  LEAVE IT THAT WAY!  :D

Remember how your mom used to cut noodles?  It kind of looked like this.  DO NOT cut that little top part we left unfolded!

Mmm....  Noodles...  This is what it'll look like when you're done cutting.

Unfurl!

OK, open up that top seam that we didn't cut through! 

You're going to cut in this way through every 'noodle'.  This will make...

...one super long piece of plastic bag 'yarn'! 

Roll it up!

The beginning of my new market bag made from already recycled ALDI bags!!!  It's brilliant!

Our new kitten!  Her name is Gia!

Sweeties!

 

 

 So, as you can see, I'm making a market bag!  I think it's ridiculously awesome.  You take bags that are recycled in the first place and then MAKE something out of them to be used forever!  You can't even imagine how sturdy this crocheted plastic yarn is!  I'm just jealous that it wasn't MY idea in the first place! 

Egads and stuff...

A friend brought up meal planning recently and I thought, 'Oh, I can answer this!  I do meal planning!!!'  I DO plan our meals and shop from that list.  I also subscribe (in other words, pay) to a service...  The recipes are great and all but I'm trying to cut costs.  Life is expensive and the last thing that I want to do is pay someone to do my job for me.  Can I not sit down for half an hour one evening and print out some new recipes and make a grocery list from that?  I was just looking up 'meal planning' on Google and I swear that half of what I found also started in with the couponing...  Ugh.  Oy.  No.  I don't use coupons.  I've tried it and no matter what, I end up spending more than I would had I just gone to Wal Mart and bought store-brand.  I don't buy name brands and using coupons just makes me buy name brands.  So, my goal for next week is to cancel my meal planning service and do it myself!  I'll *try* and share my menu when I come up with it.  ;)

Now, for my BIG NEWS!!!  I finished Baby H's wool shorties!!!  I'm a sucker for a free pattern so I used this one:  Little Fire Crochet Pants

Hammy in finished shorties.  Those are some serious thighs...

Finishing the gusset...

I crochet with the very first hook my Grandma ever gave me.  It's pretty beat up.  lol  I saved an earthworm with it once...

I love this colorway...  It's beautiful!

Working on the leg.  I lost count of how many rounds it took me to do the first leg so I eyeballed it. 

My boy in the finished product.  It's been lanolized since this picture so now it's super soft.  We just adore these pants!!!

I LOVED it.  I have to give the pattern-writer a ton of credit on this one.  I usually don't like the look of crocheted woolies but this is a pattern that was easy and worked up so beautifully!  I used merino wool yarn from Pancake and Lulu in the colorway, INK.  The shorties are so lovely and squishy and they fit the bubs so perfectly.  I had to crochet extra rows in the gusset since my little guy has some MEGA THIGHS but that's easy enough.  I love it.

WIPs and why I'm not a knitter...

Well, most people visiting this blog will be those who already know me in some way or another.  What you probably know about me is that I have 3 kids, we homeschool and live in Texas.  What you may not know is that I do not finish crafty projects.  I’m a slacker.  I get that satisfaction of seeing that a project WILL turn out correctly and then I’m fine with never making the rest of it.  My kids have 1 mitten, 1 slipper and so on.  If there are 2 to be made, I make 1 and feel okay with it.  I made a stuffed panda for my youngest daughter and when my oldest daughter asked for one, I suggested they just share.  Yes.  Share.  This is no good so I thought that maybe if I started a blog to keep me motivated, I might actually finish the things I start.  In time, I hope to add another blogger or 2 so we can all keep this going.
My crocheting background goes back a long ways.  I started when I was about 12-ish.  I knew how to but I didn’t have a need to make anything until I got pregnant with my first baby.  That’s really when I learned the harder stitches and techniques.  My grandma taught me the basics and I went from there.  I hold my crochet hook like a pencil rather than the other grip that most people use so if I ever have any tutorials, that might be odd for the viewer.  We’ll see.  Anyway, I’ve always loved the look of knit but as I’ve found out recently, I’m no good at it.  I made one hat once and that turned out well.  Since then, I haven’t been able to capture the magic again.  Meh…  I’ll post the proof of that soon. 
I have a couple of friends who knit and they try so hard to help me and it just doesn’t work out.  I start out okay and then something weird happens…  For example, I went to make a pair of slippers and they started out well!  I didn’t know how that rectangle was going to make a slipper but I figured it would all work out in the end.  They didn’t!  I don’t know what went wrong but they’re not pretty (see below).   I can pretty much read a crochet pattern and know how it’ll work out.  Knit patterns are a big, fat question mark to me.  I don’t get them.

Knit/Crochet

Here is a perfect example of my terrible knitting vs. my fabulous crocheting.  On the left is my knitting.  Wow.  That’s really terrible.  It looks like I scooped the inside out of a blue baked potato and put it on my daughter’s foot!  Really bad.  On the right is my super cute little crocheted slipper that I worked with virtually no pattern!  See how well it fits?  She wasn’t even with me when I made it!  The second slipper (not finished, of course) fits just as well and I couldn’t even remember how I made the first one and they totally match each other.  See?  I should just be happy with crochet!
My other WIPs (works-in-progress):

Wee Bootie

More wee booties...

Wool Shorties

I finished a hat for my 9 month old last month that turned out really, really cute!  Did he wear it?  No.  He pitched it and we ended up having to pick it up off the ground a hundred times before we just put it away.

Hammy in his hat!

It turned out a little girlier than I had planned on it but whatever.  He needed a hat to keep his head from burning and he kept it on just long enough.  I also have some washies made out of cotton that I’ll share later on.  No biggie but pretty anyway.
I would love to start something really intricate like lace but my tastes are more modern and I’m afraid they would just go to waste.  We’ll see.  Well, there ya have it.  My first post in my new blog.  TA-DAAAAAA.