So this weekend... I didn't have the craft mojo apparently. I felted and attempted to line my new knitted purse, but somehow seemed to fail at every turn.
Between the jamming sewing machine and pure lack of sewing mojo, I've set this little project in time out and hope to re-attempt it again this coming weekend. You might see a post sometime next week about the new selfish knitting.
Oh well on to bigger better things.
Not only do I have the purse project in the working on pile, I have a cardigan sweater (my home project) and more swiffer covers (my work project). I have two different projects going because it's just easier to leave one at work to do while on lunch and one at home to do when I have the time.
While working on the swiffer covers this afternoon I started to think. I know surprise, surprise I'm thinking.
Well in our sustainable G household project R and I have been working on, we finished out our supply of paper towels about two weeks ago. We vowed to use the dish towels we already had for everything we used to use the paper towels for.
However, I've run into a few areas that find me yearning for those easy to grab disposable towels. After much thought about it I think I've figured out a good solution that will end up on my needles. One of the paper towel relegated tasks was for covering food when nuking it in the Microwave oven. I don't necessarily want to wet an entire dish towel to complete this job now, it seems excessive. The other is to wipe down the counters after cooking or doing said dishes. We are using a dish towel a day for that day's dishes and hand wiping, but I don't want to start using much more than that because then I'm washing 8 million towels which isn't saving us much in terms of energy and water.
So my plan is to knit a bunch of wash cloth sized towels, these can be used as grab and go for either counter wipe downs or to wet and put over food about to be cooked in the nuke machine.
I think this is a good plan. I'm going to use some stitch patterns that aren't very bulky or stiff so they can be easy to manipulate and don't end up sucking all the warming action of the microwave away from the food (okay I know vaguely how a microwave works so this is a preposterous idea).
Just one more step in our journey to better ourselves, our health and our impact on this little place we call home.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Hippie Dippy Changes in the G house
Like I've stated before, we are in a state of paying off debt and building up our future lives. One of the big pushes lately in our house is to rid ourselves of most food items processed and most chemicals. i.e. chemical cleaners, health and beauty chemicals.
Many of my friends will chock this up to becoming a Left Coast Hippie, however, I feel it is less about becoming a hippie and more about becoming aware of what we are ingesting knowingly and unknowingly. R and I sat down after the swiffer sweater success and started brainstorming ideas on where else we could make sustainable, healthy choices in the items we buy.
First off was trying to eliminate processed food. We started cooking most items from scratch. We are talking pizza, macaroni and cheese and a whole host of other meals. Part of this was to create meals that could be counted on for left overs to help stretch the food dollar longer and the other was to not rely on boxed, frozen or otherwise prepared and shipped pre-made meals. This does take a little longer than just slapping a frozen meal in the oven, but I am enjoying the prep every night. R and I spend some quality time both participating in the meal creation and have managed to create some great dinners. Our favorite was the Betty Crocker Homemade Mac and Cheese, but it has since drifted to Betty Crocker's Cream Quinoa Primavera.
Granted, there are some things we cannot live without that happen to be processed. Flour, pasta and dairy products are the main stays that are a necessary evil. However, to cut down on waste we are buying our flour and pasta in bulk, and purchasing organic whenever possible.
Another area we've made a change is in our body, hand and shampoo soap. After reading a bunch of labels, we realized there were so many chemicals in commercial soaps that there had to be a better way. Lo and behold there is, you can make your own. However, R and I didn't want to commit to making soap just yet, we weren't sure if we could make it and live up to our standards. So we compromised and made a visit to P-Town's Saturday Market. I had purchased some handmade soap there for bridesmaids gifts back in 2009 and knew that there was a company that always had a booth.
R and I found the booth belonging to The Oregon Soap Company. After talking to the lady running the booth, we walked away with a few different things.
Next we are going to start making our own deodorant and laundry soap. I'm very excited about this. I know it seems a bit extreme, but when you start researching all those hard to pronounce and longer that all get out words, it starts to scare you.
So here we go down this adventurous path. I hope to have a tutorial soon on how we make our own deodorant and laundry soap, along with prices and photos. We'll be using recipes we find on the old Internet and will link accordingly.
Many of my friends will chock this up to becoming a Left Coast Hippie, however, I feel it is less about becoming a hippie and more about becoming aware of what we are ingesting knowingly and unknowingly. R and I sat down after the swiffer sweater success and started brainstorming ideas on where else we could make sustainable, healthy choices in the items we buy.
First off was trying to eliminate processed food. We started cooking most items from scratch. We are talking pizza, macaroni and cheese and a whole host of other meals. Part of this was to create meals that could be counted on for left overs to help stretch the food dollar longer and the other was to not rely on boxed, frozen or otherwise prepared and shipped pre-made meals. This does take a little longer than just slapping a frozen meal in the oven, but I am enjoying the prep every night. R and I spend some quality time both participating in the meal creation and have managed to create some great dinners. Our favorite was the Betty Crocker Homemade Mac and Cheese, but it has since drifted to Betty Crocker's Cream Quinoa Primavera.
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| Veggies for the quinoa dish |
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| The finished product! |
Granted, there are some things we cannot live without that happen to be processed. Flour, pasta and dairy products are the main stays that are a necessary evil. However, to cut down on waste we are buying our flour and pasta in bulk, and purchasing organic whenever possible.
Another area we've made a change is in our body, hand and shampoo soap. After reading a bunch of labels, we realized there were so many chemicals in commercial soaps that there had to be a better way. Lo and behold there is, you can make your own. However, R and I didn't want to commit to making soap just yet, we weren't sure if we could make it and live up to our standards. So we compromised and made a visit to P-Town's Saturday Market. I had purchased some handmade soap there for bridesmaids gifts back in 2009 and knew that there was a company that always had a booth.
R and I found the booth belonging to The Oregon Soap Company. After talking to the lady running the booth, we walked away with a few different things.
- A grab bag of miscellaneous ends for $6.00. This was full of all their different types of soap. R and I figured this would be a great use for hand soap in both the kitchen and bathroom.
- A shampoo and conditioner bar. This is amazing. I love the way that it doesn't strip my hair of the natural oils, but just gets rid of the gunk from day to day. It takes a bit of adjusting especially if you are a wash the hair everyday type like me. It was amazing to see just how much conventional shampoo was stripping my hair.
- 2 2oz. bottles of their all purpose liquid castille soap (they were having a buy one get one free special, and for $2.00 how could you pass that up). We have used everywhere from laundry, dishes, to clean the counters and shampoo the rug. This stuff is amazing. It smells better than any cleaner we have used and there isn't anything that I have found that it can't clean up. This is stuff is amazing.
Next we are going to start making our own deodorant and laundry soap. I'm very excited about this. I know it seems a bit extreme, but when you start researching all those hard to pronounce and longer that all get out words, it starts to scare you.
So here we go down this adventurous path. I hope to have a tutorial soon on how we make our own deodorant and laundry soap, along with prices and photos. We'll be using recipes we find on the old Internet and will link accordingly.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
My first ever crochet project
My experience in the fiber arts has been one of climatic evolution, nothing for a very long time and then a boom in change. By that I mean, I started with teaching myself knit and purl and stuck to scarves for about four years. I didn't do anything else aside from that for a very, very long time.
Then one day, after not knitting anything for about half a year, I decided to make baby booties. This spark in my desire to knit was brought on by the newly announced pregnancy of my cousin M. Well from the knit flat, sewn up the foot and back booties came a plethora of hats, booties, learning to knit in the round, discovering circular needles and having no spending money because I discovered the greatest thing, P-town has a TON of local yarn stores.
After I felt comfortable in my new found knitting abilities, I started to yearn to learn more. Three weeks ago, I decided to teach myself to spin yarn, you know of course, just in case the Zombie Apocalypse happens. These are skills that will make me valuable to any survivor group.
Gosh, I like to tell stories... Anyway, this then spurred me to learn to crochet. I had attempted to summit Mt. Crochet a handful of times prior in my fiber arts evolution. I failed, failed miserably. I just couldn't get over the hurdle that was only one implement with which to create fabric.
I'm not sure what was different this time, whether it was dogged determination, or just a better grasp of what I was trying to make the yarn do, I managed to create something that resembles crochet.
I present to you my Scrap Flowers in the Snow Baby Blanket. I stumbled on this pattern after seeing it on Ravelry Co-Founder's projects page. I looked at the other raveler's creations and just like the simplicity and customization of the colors.
This is unusual for me. I (don't stone me die hard crocheters) typically don't like how crochet looks. I (I'm a self admitted knitting snob) think you can do more with knitting and it looks a bit cleaner. Granted, had I learned to crochet first, I might feel totally different. This was the way the cookie crumbled in my case.
However, I really liked this blanket. So I set out to one day make it, though not really sure how to do it, since I really didn't know how to crochet. However, Solvig Grimstad did a fantastic job of writing a pattern that was simple to follow for a beginner as well as document each step with a corresponding photo to help double check that your outcome looked like hers as you went. Another highlight of how good this pattern is Solvig's native language isn't English, however her Norwegian/English pattern was easy to follow and well executed. With the great pattern and my copy of Reader's Digest Knitting and Crochet Stitches off I went.
The first few disks looked a bit sloppy, but improved with each successive one. I used all scrap yarn I have in my big Rubbermaid drawer system. This made R very happy. He didn't have to see another bag come in full of yarn, and I was able to make space in the drawers, something that is becoming an issue, and didn't spend any money. I used all Cascade 220 Superwash that was left over from two baby blankets and gifts for friends. Apparently I like blues, greys and oranges. All the scraps I had left over fell in some shade of those three color families.
I made 24 disks, to make a 4x6 wide blanket before doing the square border around each disk. I started to run out of certain colors of scrap yarn, therefore the blanket ended up a little small. I think this will make a great car seat/stroller blanket. It might work as a newborn blanket, but it is a bit small. It measures in total 2'x3'. Is fully machine wash and dryable. The ideal size looks like 48 disks (6 disks x 8 disks) would work out as a great baby blanket size.
Next up this week, adventures in switching from conventional to natural soap.
Then one day, after not knitting anything for about half a year, I decided to make baby booties. This spark in my desire to knit was brought on by the newly announced pregnancy of my cousin M. Well from the knit flat, sewn up the foot and back booties came a plethora of hats, booties, learning to knit in the round, discovering circular needles and having no spending money because I discovered the greatest thing, P-town has a TON of local yarn stores.
After I felt comfortable in my new found knitting abilities, I started to yearn to learn more. Three weeks ago, I decided to teach myself to spin yarn, you know of course, just in case the Zombie Apocalypse happens. These are skills that will make me valuable to any survivor group.
Gosh, I like to tell stories... Anyway, this then spurred me to learn to crochet. I had attempted to summit Mt. Crochet a handful of times prior in my fiber arts evolution. I failed, failed miserably. I just couldn't get over the hurdle that was only one implement with which to create fabric.
I'm not sure what was different this time, whether it was dogged determination, or just a better grasp of what I was trying to make the yarn do, I managed to create something that resembles crochet.
This is unusual for me. I (don't stone me die hard crocheters) typically don't like how crochet looks. I (I'm a self admitted knitting snob) think you can do more with knitting and it looks a bit cleaner. Granted, had I learned to crochet first, I might feel totally different. This was the way the cookie crumbled in my case.
The first few disks looked a bit sloppy, but improved with each successive one. I used all scrap yarn I have in my big Rubbermaid drawer system. This made R very happy. He didn't have to see another bag come in full of yarn, and I was able to make space in the drawers, something that is becoming an issue, and didn't spend any money. I used all Cascade 220 Superwash that was left over from two baby blankets and gifts for friends. Apparently I like blues, greys and oranges. All the scraps I had left over fell in some shade of those three color families. 
Next up this week, adventures in switching from conventional to natural soap.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sustainable Swiffer Sweater
So as I promised, here is the the discussion regarding the knitted swiffer pad that I completed a few weeks ago.
R and I have been working ever since last summer to shed ourselves of the chains of CC debt. We gave ourselves a timeline of two years to get out of about $7,000 in debt. In an effort to be Planny McPlannington, I created a spread sheet that I mistakenly added $100 a month more to the cc payments and figured out that we could be out of debt in actually less than a year and a half. R and I grinned and bore the extra $100, and in doing so we've been really creative on how to spend less on groceries, entertainment and a whole host of other things.
We budgeted $80 a week for all our food, toiletries, cleaning supplies and anything else we can get at the local supermarket. If we were just buying foods than the $80 for two was a breeze. However, throwing in all the cleaning supplies started to take away from the food we could buy.
To make a long story even longer, half way through this process we ran out of disposable swiffer pads. On to the weekly grocery list it went. Once at the store I about choked on the price ($6.99 for 12 pads). I looked at R and said "I bet I could knit something that works just as well."
R doesn't doubt my knitting abilities, if he did he wouldn't get cool things like knitted beanies and fingerless gloves. He wasn't sure though how well a knitted swiffer pad would do compared to the ones we buy in the store. We compromised and I said I'd make one and we'd test it, if it didn't work, we'd shell out the money and find another way to cut somewhere else.
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| Back pockets for ultimate swiffer coverage |
Off to the local yarn shop near the house I went, purchased two skeins of Lily Sugar and Cream 100% cotton yarn ($3 each). After a bit of research on my favorite knitting website Ravelry, I found this pattern. The pattern calls for only two repeats of the brick pattern, however, that wasn't going to fit over the swiffer head. So I completed 3 full repeats and then bound off. I sewed the sides over to create two pockets and slapped it on the Swiffer.
The Velcro on the swiffer held the pad nicely so it wasn't sliding around during use. Now it was time to try it out.
Compared to the regular disposable swiffer pads, the knitted one gripped the floor a bit more. It didn't glide as easily along the floor. Some might see this as a downside. I, on the other hand, really like this difference. I was still able to push the swiffer around the floor without too much upper body strength. I also felt that with this grip, I had to do less swipes over spills and stains on the floor. With the original pad I had to run over the spill 4 or 5 times before there wasn't a trace of it. With the knitted pad, I was able to wipe it up in two passes.
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| First two swiffer covers made with two skeins of Sugar and Cream cotton yarn |
The brick texture to the knitted pad I think helps the scrub feature. Also, I think the cotton is less scratchy on my surfaces. Granted we only have linoleum in the apartment, I'm sure this would do great on all types of flooring.
After one washing of the knitted pad (washed in hot water and dried in the dryer), it did shrink a bit, however, I think the fit is just a bit snugger and better after the wash. Over all, I'm pleased with this switch. For less than the cost of the pads in the store I was able to get two knitted pads from the yarn I bought. These can be used indefinatly and will be great.
My goal is to try and post every couple of days during the work week. I'll take the weekends off to create topics and to come up with ideas. My next post will be about my newest project. Granted I have three total projects on needles right now. However, this particular one just snuck up and ended up on a hook.
My goal is to try and post every couple of days during the work week. I'll take the weekends off to create topics and to come up with ideas. My next post will be about my newest project. Granted I have three total projects on needles right now. However, this particular one just snuck up and ended up on a hook.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Three months later and what is new?
Well oh well, a lot can change in three months.
The swiffer cover got me thinking; where else can I make some active changes in the ways R and I doing things to be better to the planet and to ourselves. So we talked and we have slowly been making the changes to be chemical free, sustainable and better in our little world we live in.
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| Our first container garden '10 |
R, due to health issues, never went of to train with the Army. He is home, helping me around the house and working on many side projects. The biggest one is The Backyard Farmers Guild. Ever since we planted our first container garden in the backyard he has become a maniac about planting. He loves getting out and digging in the dirt. So as he started to research best practices and better methods, he decided to take all the knowledge he is gaining and share it. So if you are interested in growing your own veggies and the like, please take a look.
What am I up too? Well the stationary design business is at a stand still. This isn't for any other reason than I haven't been out there looking for clients or work. I'm working slowly on the invitations for my dear friend K. Her wedding is later this year and we've been busy developing the look and feel of her invites.
What I have been buys with is knitting. What else is new with that? Since January I have completed nine different knitting projects. Two of them are Christmas presents for my parents and for my brother and his lovely wife. The rest were gifts for my "nephew" F for his 1st birthday, a chemo hat for another coworker, a sustainable cover for my swiffer and then a bunch of projects for me. Selfish knitting is not always the best, but I sure enjoy the end result.
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| Two of the soon to be many knitted, reusabel swiffer covers |
The swiffer cover got me thinking; where else can I make some active changes in the ways R and I doing things to be better to the planet and to ourselves. So we talked and we have slowly been making the changes to be chemical free, sustainable and better in our little world we live in.
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| One of F's birthday presents |
I know I've re-invented the wheel here on this blog a couple of times and then didn't follow through, but I'm hoping to fill you in on our little world and show you ways we are changing things and if you like the ideas please use them in your own world. I'll also cover knitting projects I'm working on and hope to have more in-progress shots as I go. Granted at the rate at which I knit, that might not happen as I have a hard time putting down the knitting to take a photo.
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| Selfish knitting |
Monday I hope to fill you in on the full details of the swiffer cover and how it works.
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