Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Oops

Just looked at my posting from yesterday.

$10 is not exactly a steal for a used book, is it? Unless it is Principals of Knitting.

I actually paid $1 for the Rowan book.

I really have to upgrade my typing skills.

Monday, July 16, 2007

What to do with the Leftovers


What to do with leftover dishrag yarn. Knitting dishcloths is the ultimate easy fix. I have made a lot of them. However, there is always something left over. Being the frugal person that I am, I just can't stand to throw it out, so I accumulate little balls of this and that, look at them from time to time, and wonder why. Yes, I could combine them to make some kind of patchwork dishcloth, but I don't find this very appealing, and I hate knots and things in the cloth.

The Summer 2007 issue of Knitters Magazine has a design called the Beach Band Sweater (or something like that, I don't have the thing here at my desk), using Takhi Cotton Classic worsted weight yarn. It is OK, nothing to really get me excited, and nothing that I would personally care to wear. BUT some very clever person, who probably had accumulated lots little balls of leftover cotton yarn from making the sweater itself and felt guilty tossing them, took the basic patterns and designed a small shoulder bag, which can be downloaded from the Knitters website.

This is a quick thrill, friends. In less than 1 week I had finished the bag body, bottom, and strap and pretty well demolished the dishrag leftovers:



Yesterday I sewed it together, wove in the ends, and voila!



I do not spend a lot of money on myself (especially now that I am committed to using up stash before any significant yarn acquisitions). I had a bunch of Border's Bucks I needed to spend use this month (like $15, which is pretty useful). And I got a 25% off coupon from somewhere that was about to expire. I suppose I could have saved the bucks for the Harry Potter coming out over the weekend, but I could not use the coupon for that. Behold the reward for being such a good girl. Lovely, lovely, lovely.




Our local public library has a table where they sell donated books for cheap. I scored this Rowan book for the princely sum of $10.