More Yarn Recycling

Recently, this:
Became this:
i.e., a thrift-store sweater became a little bit over 1200 yards of 100% wool laceweight yarn, in a color I love: bright, bright blue. Maybe for a shawl? Or a lacy scarf? Or, well, lots of lacy scarves? (1200 yards is a LOT of scarf.)

And this weekend I found two new sweaters I'm very excited about frogging*:

The sweater above is half angora, half lambswool. The one below though, that's the real treat. Can you read the tag?


100% cashmere. Cashmere. Yeah, cashmere yarn is neither in the fun money part of my budget nor the gift part of my budget. (Check out this link for an idea of what it usually costs.) But, a men's large sweater at the thrift store? Definitely in the budget. It was hard to find - you could tell that most of the cashmere sweaters at the thrift store were there because someone had accidentally thrown them in the dryer, i.e., you had a sweater whose tag said "extra large" but it looked like it might fit a ten-year-old snugly. You can't pull good yarn out of a sweater that's shrunk.
But this one is in great condition. And it's sooooo soft. I hope it frogs well, because if so, I'm going to be one really happy fiber artist.

And some friends of mine might be getting really soft scarves for Christmas.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

*The term "frogging" a sweater comes from the way "rip it, rip it" sounds when you say it aloud.

Frugal Friday: buying discounted plants

Maybe they don't do it everywhere, but at the Lowe's near my house, if you go all the way to the back (or, sometimes, tucked just to the right of the entrance at the front) of the garden section, you'll find a big moveable shelf full of discounted plants. They're usually more than half off - often $2 for a nice, mature plant.

Sometimes, these plants are pretty much done for the world. But, often, the only thing wrong with them is that they are done flowering. They're not at the height of prettiness anymore, and so Lowe's can't sell them for full price.

I love, love, love, looking through this shelf. I've found verbena, flowering sage (salvia), ivy and more.

The trick to buying discounted plants, at Lowe's or wherever they sell them in your area, I've found, is to buy perennials and not annuals. The annuals are probably pretty much done (though, if you're a greener thumb than me, maybe you can coax them into blossoming again before the season is over). But the perennials, of course, you can deadhead, feed, water, and enjoy for years. I have a pot of red, white and purple verbena that went on sale after the fourth of July that's flowering beautifully and abundantly.


The other fun thing you can sometimes find there are the gift plants that have started to go bad. You know, the ones that have been planted to look extremely beautiful for a week or two, but then crowd themselves out because they've been planted too closely in too small a pot. I got a three pot gift package of ivy that had about nine little ivy plants in each four inch pot! No wonder it was dying! But take it home, separate the plants, repot them - and, wow, that's a lot of ivy for $3.


Anyway, hopefully you can find a store nearby with a similar, possibility-laden shelf!



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: free flowers

My front flower bed has about six lovely calla lily plants growing in it. And I didn't pay a dime for them. What's my secret? Dividing perennials.

My weird, boggy side yard looked like just a weedy jungle when we moved into this house. Nobody goes back there, and so it took me some months to realize that some of the weedy-looking things were actually valuable plants. Among them: roses, irises and calla lilies. The true nature of these plants dawned on me when they started blooming in the spring.

The problem? Like I said, no one sees my side yard. It's just a small, awkward walk-through on the side of the house, with barely any windows looking out on it. In other words, those gorgeous flowers were going completely unappreciated. So, I moved them.

Using methods similar to those described here, I dug up around the calla lilies, and found that they had indeed spread their bulbs (rhizomes?) underground. I dug up the likeliest looking ones (while leaving the mother plant where it was) and planted them in my front flower beds.

Now the plant that no one appreciated is being seen and enjoyed every time we go through our front door. Dividing perennials = free, frugal beauty.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: cheap babysitting

(With a nod of thanks to my excellent brother, who rocked my crying son for a whole 30 minutes last week. That Miss. M. of yours is one lucky girl.)


My frugal tip this Friday is how to get a babysitter for less than the going rate: hire him or her for after the kiddos are in bed, and then offer him the amenities of your house.

This works best with students from your local college. If your husband works at a university (mine does, in the IT department), this'll be a little easier. But if not, get to know the college students at your church. You're sure to find one who could use A) a quiet place to study and B) free access to a washer and dryer.

Basically, you get your dorm-living sitter to show up after the kiddos are asleep, and then you go out with your husband for a one or two hour date. You can pay less because hopefully the sitter won't be doing any actual interaction with the kids; she'll basically just be there in case of emergencies. You get to go out, and the sitter gets to do nothing more than sit back and study in your living room, just keeping an ear out in case someone needs to be rocked or have a pacifier put back in. You can also sweeten the deal by letting the sitter do her laundry at your house: I have a friend who got a sitter for free this way. She babysat in exchange for laundry priveleges (doing laundry at a dorm can be really expensive!)

You can also point out to your sitter that your home is much quieter than the dorm, or that you have great snacks in the fridge.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: Planning Ahead, But Not Too Much

Most of us know that menu planning can save a lot of money. Going into the grocery store with a list that tells you exactly what you need to buy - and no more - means that you spend less on things you don't need.

But something I've figured out is that there's virtue in being a bit flexible. I've started purposefully being less than exact in parts of my menu, and found that it saves me money.

I use this technique most often when it comes to fruit. Fruit is one of my favorite side dishes; fresh or canned, it takes little preparation, it's healthy, it's delicious, and it entirely eliminates the need for dessert. But even though pineapple might be the perfect fruit to serve with your curry on a Tuesday night, you can't count on pineapple being on sale when you go to the store Tuesday morning. So instead of saying, "Pineapple, asian pear, oranges" on my grocery list for the three side dishes I need that week, I just write, "Dinner fruit 1, dinner fruit 2, dinner fruit 3", or "canned fruit 1, canned fruit 2, canned fruit 3", and then I can just buy whatever's cheapest. This saves me a lot of money.

(My favorite canned fruit, btw, is the kind packed in juice, because then you get a nice cup of juice too. But even if its canned in heavy syrup, you can just rinse it well, and it's still a pretty healthy side.)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

book review: More-with-Less

This is a book I have wanted since I first spotted it on a friend's cookbook shelf. Thanks to a Christmas giftcard, it's now on my own cookbook shelf. It looks not just at the how of frugality in cooking, but at the why. And while I don't agree with absolutely all of it, it's sure a good place to start.

"More-with-Less", written/edited by Doris Janzen Longacre, and now in its 25th Anniversary Edition, is a Mennonite cookbook, put out with a purpose of "deconsumption", of using a moderate amount of food in a world where many go hungry.

The cookbook came about when the Mennonite Central Committee asked its members to look at their lifestyles, and to try to spend and eat about 10% less. The members were enthusiastic about the idea, but stymied at exactly how they were supposed to do this.

"More-with-Less" was the answer to that how. It's half cookbook, half philosophy-of-consumption book, with long introductions to each section, and quotations that begin with things like "I'm impressed with what Zambians eat that North Americans throw away ..." sprinkled throughout the recipes.

Many of the recipes are international, but real international, not the ethnic-inspired-with-lots-of-expensive-ingredients-thrown-in-so-Americans-will-eat-it sort of international recipes I find in other cookbooks. No, this is the cookbook you want if you've ever looked longly at those huge, cheap bags of rice and beans and cornmeal in the store, wishing you knew enough about cooking to know what to do with them.

One of the best parts of this cookbook is the "Gather Up the Fragments" section at the end of each chapter, which is full of suggestions on what to do with the sort of leftovers that chapter's recipes produce. The egg and cheese chapter, for example. has ideas for hard cheese, moldy cheese, leftover whites and leftover yolks. (That chapter also has complete instructions on making your own cheese from scratch - wow!)

The two cookbooks More-with-Less reminds me of most are the missionary cookbook my mother-in-law gave me, which has instructions you could follow in any country you happen to find yourself in (i.e., how to cook without common American prepared foods) and the old fifties cookbook I bought used, that has instructions for the basic-ist of basics, like how to make coffee without a coffeemaker.


We used this (our own copy!) for the first time this Saturday, with our pancakes. We've been having pancakes with jam or honey for awhile, because after our last bottle of fake maple syrup ran out, we just didn't bother to buy anymore. But I looked up syrups in More-with-Less, and pretty soon we had hot, yummy, strawberry syrup for the pancakes: just sugar, water, cornstarch and some chopped-up frozen strawberries. The syrup was ready before the pancakes were.


Cooking is a big part of homemaking; homes are made for people, people have bodies, and those bodies have to be feed. And as a Christian homemaker, I want all of my work, even my cooking, to be done in a way that pleases the Lord. As one of the readers quoted in the book says, "for Christians, even the simple act of cooking a meal can be a testimony of faithfulness." Waste not, want not. And the whole idea behind this book is that what you save from being wasted can be used to fulfill other people's want. I like that this book doesn't see spirituality as separate from practicality. I like the way it makes frugality and faithfulness march hand in hand.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica