New Year

Happy New Year!

Wow. That's a little late, eh? Did you make resolutions? I usually don't. I do, however, like to set the tone of my year by it's first few months. This year, I'm going to work more on living my life with what I already have. Less consumerism. Less waste. I know, building a beautiful fabric and yarn stash is fun, and believe me, I have my stash. I want to do my best to use what I have already. This will be good for me. I do not mean just crafting, though. I want to do this in my food/grocery planning, with our clothing, with my family's other needs... I also want to blog about it when I have a minute and, as always, I *LOVE* reading your responses and ideas! Ready to jump into the year of use what you have, upcycle, make do and make it new? I am!

You get the chance to benefit from some of this too. It also means DESTASHING what I know I'm really never going to use. Take this:

I've never opened these. Back when I was knitting custom woolies by the doze

n I had grand ideas of dying my own yarn. Then I got more into sewing and less into knitting. While I'd love to give it a try, it hasn't happened and it's probably not going to. They'll be listed (at a much reduced price than I paid for them) in my shop soon.

And this:

This is a great and fun and easy to follow quilting book and is in fantastic condition. It has 10 cute patterns in it. My very first official quilt was the turtle you see on the front. I also had plans to make a few others in here but...it hasn't happened so... it is ready for a new home.

As I go through my crafting stash, I will likely find more gems. I'll try to post them here first to give you a heads up.

My kids and I have also being practicing this concept with their crafting. Namely, their valentines. What we did is not a new idea, but I can't wait to write about it and share my photos with you soon! I'm working on ideas that will prevent my family from wasting food as well. And I already have several clothes sewing projects in the works for Spring/Summer that involve upcycling, stash busting, and repurposing. Yay!