Use It Up....Not Always As Minis...

For those of you that have been reading for a while, this is an often quoted saying..."Use it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without."

I use it a lot...The trouble is, I never seem to use everything up or wear everything out.

I keep finding new things to do with stuff that other people find useless...

First example is magazines.  They are usually thrown out or die a horrible death in some doctor's or dentist's office.

I found a blog from Europe and immediately had to try this technique.  First I made Widget a bed.  He loves it and sleeps in it every day. 

Now I am working on a cat cave.  I have the bottom done and will be working upwards from the circle that you see.  I also started experimenting with a tote bag. 

These are surprisingly strong and probably will last for years.  Fairly quick to make too.

I still cant resist a bargain at garage sales.  I do like making all kinds of baskets, especially coiled.

I picked all of this wire up at a garage sale.  I have made several small baskets and will probably make a lot more. I can also use it for jewelry. This amount of wire, if I bought it new would cost a lot of money.  Most of it is copper. I got it for a couple  of bucks. I am sure that it would have ended up in a dumpster if I hadn't rescued it.  My good deed for the day....And money saving  besides.

Yesterday, I really was not feeling like moving much.  So I whipped out my ball of sisal and some scrap pearl cotton.

This is one of my favorite techniques.  Coiled baskets aren't as fast as some of the others, but they can be made in so many shapes and sizes and whatever color you want to make them.

I am using three strands of thread held together, so it uses three times as much thread, in a third of the time....Did that sentence make sense?

I did take the time to dig through a couple of other drawers, in search of more thread.

I found this forgotten bag that I started a couple of years ago....Guess what I am going to work on today?

If all else fails, I grab a crochet hook and make storage bags.

I don't bother with patterns for these.  I just go round and round.  Then I stop when I think it's done...

There are free patterns on websites like Crochet Pattern Central http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/ if you don't want to wing it.

Again, these are done with more than one strand of crochet cotton held together.

When I run out of one color I just add in something that I think will look OK with the rest of the thread.

The pink one was done with some open work and then strips of fabric were run through the holes.

At one point, about 15 years ago, I though that tassels would use up a lot of thread....I found them too work intensive and when they were finished, they were pretty, but not really useful.

That experiment went by the wayside....Back to bags.

Anyway, since I am sitting around coughing and blowing my nose a lot, I have given up on minis for the couple of  days.  I really am making progress.  I need to go find my #F crochet hook. 


See you tomorrow.