As I’ve mentioned here before, I go to my neighborhood Whole Foods a lot—an average of about . 75 times a day. Since I go so often, I try to remember (though I usually forget) to stuff a couple of their plastic bags in my purse when I leave the apartment so that I can reuse them, get 10 cents off my groceries, and feel just a little bit smug. Whole Foods has seemed proud of its plastic bags, displaying signs touting their strength (they can hold “up to 25 pounds”), which makes double-bagging a thing of the past. They really are good bags.
But not long ago, Whole Foods announced plans to entirely phase out their plastic bags by Earth Day, further compelling us shoppers to bring our own. And if you forget your own? Your punishment is a paper bag.
I never really had anything against paper grocery bags until my Whole Foods checker gave me one today. She actually gave me two, double bagging them. The feel of the crisp 100% recycled paper was kind of a refreshing change at first, until I walked the 10 minutes back to my apartment with the hefty load during rush hour. Talk about chafing! And there’s no way I’m going to fold this stiff paper up in my purse to re-use tomorrow. (It wouldn’t fit, actually.) I suppose I’ll eventually have to settle on a couple of compact nylon sacks to slip in my purse, sometimes, when I remember.
But what to do with all those paper bags we’ll surely be amassing? Whole Foods is one step ahead of us, offering up five things we can do to “keep this bag alive” right on the side of the bag. How handy! The list includes wrapping a gift with it, putting something in it and giving it to the needy (I say this one doesn’t really count, since a plastic bag is arguably preferable for this use), and making a paper airplane. So we may have higher fuel costs for shipping the to-be-doubled paper bags, and chafed hands from carrying them, and guilty consciences for taking them, but we’ll at least have an endless supply of paper planes to throw at each other for the foreseeable future.
My second attempt at amigurumi resulted in an almost convincing toy!
This is Frankie the Silent Film Star. You might remember him from such slapstick classics as Crackerjack Capers and Gold Diggers of Aught Six. Unfortunately the talented tap-dancing Frankie was phased out of Hollywood once the talkies took over—there were only so many situations writers could come up with to explain away his lack of a mouth.
I guess Frankie doesn’t look drastically different from my pathetic Little Give Up of last fall, but armed with acrylic yarn and a metal crochet hook (thanks, Rebecca!), it wasn’t half the struggle this time. I primarily used this kind of blurry YouTube video to refresh my technique and then experimented with simple increases and decreases. And a star was born!
I kind of feel like I’m doing a lot of “me” talk on the blog lately, but I’ve just had a lot of things going on recently that I’m excited about. Please bear with me for one more!
Bonney was kind enough to arrange for me to put my toys on display at the public library in New London, New Hampshire this past weekend. They have a nice, big display case, so I stuffed it with ALL of my toys!
I’ve been amassing these guys on various shelves and counters in my apartment over the past year, so it was a lot of fun to have them all together in one place and looking so organized. The library staff were very nice and just let us do our thing and take as much time as we needed to arrange everything (about two hours). By the time we left, the toys had attracted a small group of wide-eyed 5-year-olds, so I called the effort a success.
These ended up being my two favorite shelves:
The library itself is really beautiful—I was a little surprised I’d never been there before. If you happen to live in the area, I hope you’ll swing by and check out the display while it’s up! (I think my toys will be there for at least a month or so.)
Alice at Kathryn Ivy just made the cuutest Butterfull!
She modified the pattern by picking up stitches for the legs and using an embroidered chain stitch on the wings. Oh, and she added a sweet little mouth!
Alice mentioned in her post that there’s one part of the pattern that mistakenly mentions felting, though no felting is actually required. Oops! That’s since been corrected—I’m hoping it’s a minor enough point that it doesn’t trip anyone up.
This is one butterfly that I would love to catch in a net and take home!
My friend Gabriel makes nice art. I went to his senior thesis show at Cooper Union today.
Gabriel is such a good guy, and I’m excited to see where he goes with his work from here.
My mother-in-law Bonney was eager to share her latest fabric find with me when I arrived in New Hampshire for the weekend:
Oh my. Was all I had to say. I asked her if she had plans for her half-naked cowboys, firemen, policemen, construction workers, and delivery boys—fortunately, no plans in particular.
I’m supposing that the primary purpose of these prints is to sit in a closet and occasionally be brought out for laughs, but maybe I’m just not thinking creatively enough. For the curious, Bonney got them from eQuilter.com
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