I don't consider myself a crafty person. But then, I hunker down in this heat wave and felt little birds for the holidays with Little Pie. That's kinda crafty. We have fun Little Pie and I. She always out does me. Maybe it's just because she's so sweet and everything she touches becomes such. Which ones did she make? Just pick out the sweetest ones and you have them.
I'll also buy a thrift store scarf for a dollar or two and pull it apart and knit the foundations for long pair of arm warmers with this 100% wool yarn here:
Then find a few skeens of an angora/wool/nylon blend in the thrift store bags for a few bucks and knit a holiday gift that's going to be so gorgeous, I can't wait to give it. It was modeled off a design I saw in a boutique. Here's a sneak:
Today I scored eight skeens of a mohair/wool/acrylic blend for $7 total. I was quite happy to find this among the piles of ucky acrylic yarns. Knitting is almost a form of meditation and I'd just completed the project above and didn't really want it to end. If you knit, you'll know I saved grocery bags of cash and still ended up with a beautiful quality product. Little Pie helped me roll them.
Mt knitting needles? They're thrift too. Metal, plastic, wooden. All sizes and lengths.
Then there were the hand-felted beads bought in a bag for $2 that I strung up to make bracelets on thrifted elastic twine. I've a BUNCH of bracelets saved for Pie's friends during the holidays. They're darling.
Remember the trunk for $2?
I sanded and painted it with leftover paint from the bedroom job. It now sits in our ante room as a coffee table and holds all my knitting supplies.
Nah, I don't like crafts, especially craft stores. Maybe a specialty mom and pop yarn store. But big retail chains? Yuck! Maybe I'm not crafty, just resourceful. I think that's what crafty used to be until someone came along and created an entire industry around it just to make money. Silly.
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12 comments:
I love it! At the yard sales Sat I picked up a pair of homemade curtains for fifty cents. The fabric is a cotton, blue and white toile print. That evening I ripped out all the hems and casings to discover that the maker had made them each doubleing the fabric, so the pair yielded 3 1/3 yards total. Washed and ironed yesterday, I am making a fancy scalloped edge hamper lining tonite. It will be beautiful and there will be enough for a matching pillow, I think. Here's to being resourceful! Marie
Marie!
You have the spirit of an old world designer! A Coco Channel! Funny how we associate Channel with such grandiosity when Coco Channel has such humble roots.
I celebrate your ingenuity and lament that I do not know my way around a sewing machine without jamming it up.
To the "anonymous" person who wrote the August 30th comment that has since been deleted:
The past policy of this blog has been to allow comments to stand that disagree with posts by The Thrifty Chicks. In the history of this blog, one comment was removed because it contained profanity.
But, after sleeping on it, your remarks were so vitriolic and toxic I cannot condone that kid of abuse in the comment section.
We buy our felting wool at a small mom and pop urban crafts store, Fancy Tiger, just a few store fronts up from the Goodwill at Archer & Broadway in Denver. Fancy Tiger is an eco-friendly store with some pretty cool classes: http://fancytiger.com/craftindex.html They also have a boutique where they promote local designers with no aversion to re-cycling textiles.
Hello Shopping Golightly,
good for you for removing nasty comments! I enjoy reading your blog and many others. I'm appalled at some of the hateful comments that people leave - the sooner those comments are removed the better!
btw, the birds are adorable. applause to both you and Little Pie.
Leslie
Leslie,
Monitoring comments is a tough balance. This blog has had wonderful, insightful dialogs in the comment section where different opinions are thoughtfully considered. Regardless, you do have a valid point that many people leave horrible, go-for-the-jugular comments under the shield of anonymity.
Do you make your own felting wool from old wool garments? I'm just starting to learn about the craft of it and was thinking I'd have to make my own felting wool (by shrinking old garments first).
Janeen,
No. I'll have to check into that! Of all the things I've seen go through thrift, I've yet to snag a bag of felting wool. Luckily it's not expensive at all. If you buy a felting kit, then you pay, a lot. It's pretty amazing what $5 can buy, enough to make a lot of little birds. Plus, it's nice to keep things organic.
Please share what you learn as you try out new possibilities.
Hello Denver! Here, in Sonoma I've learned more about felting from Waldorf-schooled children than adults!!! It seems Waldorf teaches kids, in a certain grade, about felting. So, around here, where Waldorf schools abound, old wool fabrics (sweaters, blankets, etc) disappear FAST! I love that you scored a bag of felt beads and got to create! And I heart your birdies! About "censoring"; I support your decision, afterall, this blog is "your home". And, recently a friend wrote that "vitriolic & toxic" comments were a measure of the increasing popularity of a blog....so congratulations?? are in order! (An LOL spin!)
First off, if you're going to leave vitriolic and toxic remarks, at least own up to them. Don't hide behind anonymity!
On a more pleasant note, I love your little birdies! I would love to learn how to felt. I have started taking up knitting again and find it meditative. Next step is to knit something other than a scarf - lol! After that, I will need to learn how to crochet.
Although I do love the chain craft stores, I applaud your resourcefulness in reusing items from the thrift store. Myself, I reuse things I find at the thrift store in my cardmaking - including pictures from children's books, bags of confetti, etc. I think doing so gives my cards an even more unique, handcrafted look. I volunteer for the local Friends of the Library organization, and there used to be a woman who would make cards using elements removed from books too damaged to be sold. The cards truly were one-of-a-kind.
Serena,
Knitting IS meditative. Retired books make GREAT clip art.
Chain retail craft stores make me sad. So much of it can be found thrift, beads, embroidery floss, vintage fabric, thread, needles, embroidery hoops, buttons, and the like. When I think off all the imported petroleum-based stuff in chain craft stores I get sad; heavy carbon footprint, jobs lost over seas, and people thinking they need to buy new stuff to be creative.
I few weeks ago I bought a bag of spools of thread and in it was a huge wad of zippers snipped from old clothing. The zippers were old but sturdy.
I held that wad of zipper in my hand and stared at it a while. The former owner saved everything worth saving and reusing instead of tossing it to the landfill. To her, I've no doubt it was simple common sense. To me, it was poetry and an act of love long forgotten.
LOVE the felted birdies...I need to learn so I can do it with my stepdaughter. I am looking into checking a book out from the library so I can learn more. Great work
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