Craftiness...

I have a running count in my head now, seemingly at all times.  I was folding towels: Fold the first towel.  One.  Fold the next towel.  Two.  It wasn't until the third towel that I realized what was going on.

You see I've been crocheting a lot lately, and I have to count stitches the entire time I am crocheting.  So apparently that has transferred over to other areas of my life.

What does crocheting have to do with a sustainable life?  Well, for starters, I'm embracing handmade as a really good thing.  I've started looking around, especially when I see something that I want or like, and I think, "I could make that."  That's not always true - I'm not an expert crafter - but usually I can make an attempt.  When you make something yourself (sometimes for cheaper than you could buy it), you know that it wasn't made in a sweatshop and you know what materials were used to make it.  It's kind of like cooking or baking - you know what ingredients went into the dish and you can control how much salt or oil go in.  And I've found it can be really satisfying!

I'll trace the path that I've taken to get here.  A dear friend bought me a present from etsy.com, "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade."  Over the last year or so, I look at etsy way too often for my own good and have bookmarked so many different sellers - either to buy their things or as inspiration.  (By the way, if you aren't crafty at all, supporting sellers on etsy is a great way to contribute to the handmade movement!)

Then, at some point, I think from rereading Little House on the Prairie or something, I got it into my head that I wanted to make a rag rug.  I searched the Internet for rag rug instructions; the best and easiest to follow were from This Vintage Chica.  But I had to relearn to crochet in order to accomplish this.  I pulled out my crochet hooks and instructions, and with a lot of help from my mom, I figured out how to do a basic single crochet - and it stuck this time.  I feel like I had an epiphany; I never really understood what I was doing before, and I finally do.

So I cut up some fabric and made my rag rug, and now I've been crocheting like crazy.  I really think I'm addicted - sometimes it's all I want to do (which is a problem when you have the rest of your life to attend to).  And making rag rugs is a great use for, well, rags, as well as scrap fabric from other projects - so it's recycling!

I had a lot more to write about crafting, but this post is getting long, so I think I will come back to the subject with info on the yarn I am using, the quilt I am making, the pinboard I made and some other fun sites related to this topic.  For now, I leave you with this crazy gallery of things to do with yarn and a picture of my finished rag rug.