My new friend (who scarily is almost like the twin I never had and was separated at birth from - appart from the fact she is nearly 10yrs younger than me - anyhow I digress) found this amazing blog called Frugal and Thriving and she shared the link with me and we are OBSESSED. So much so that her darling husband is sick of hearing her use the word FRUGAL in his presence.
Firstly we got really excited about the chemical free cleaning ideas. I'm totally not a hippie, but I have always been concerned about the chemicals that are in the products we use each and every single day. So I'm going to start to use these ideas - but I'll use up my old cleaning products first because I really can't afford to just throw out a bunch of stuff and besides it would end up in landfill - not a good plan.
Then, we got even more excited when we learned that the amazing Melissa (creator of Frugal and Thriving) knits her own cleaning cloths. Yes, knits!!! So my lovely friend and I organised to meet at Aces (see previous post) knowing we shouldn't venture in alone (hehehe) and searched for the perfect wool to (yes we are mad) knit our own dish cloths and cleaning cloths. We dug through piles of wool and eventually found two colours we both liked. Oh yeah, we'd decided to colour code our cloths so we didn't forget which cloths were for cleaning the toilet etc and which ones were for the kitchen area. So we got two balls each one blue and one yellow. Yellow for the cleaning and blue for the kitchen. My good friend had never knitted before, and she's a lefty, so I set about trying to teach her to knit....yes I said trying....I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. I think in the end we both stuffed them up so we started again - not that it would have mattered for cleaning cloths, but we did start again.
And here is the result of my knitting!
Front
Back
I have actually now knitted two of these dish cloths (that's all I could get out of one ball). I'm saving the little scrap of wool that is left over and plan to make a multi-coloured something, sometime.
Then just the other night, I couldn't sleep and I'd started knitting my first blue cloth using a new pattern, and I didn't know how do to the stitch required for the centre (little did I know it was the same as the stitch used in the two yellow cloths) and I was thinking about how far I would go with this frugal living. I thought about all the wasteful practices I have, that I'm willing to change. One that really lept out at me was the disposable cotton pads I used to clean off my make up and tone when I'm doing my usual face routine. I use three of these cotton suckers a day and throw them in the bin. I know they are small but it's the small changes that sometimes make a big difference. So I thought maybe I could knit little cloths to use for removing my make up and toning. The next day I bravely faced Aces alone...yes alone...and made a wonderful discover. In amoungst the overflowing shelves I found some balls of bamboo 'wool' for knitting. Bamboo material is just incredible. It is used in the new modern cloth nappies another friend of my mine is raving about - perhaps another post should be devoted to the cloth nappy. Anyhow, the bamboo is so soft and great for a babies bottom so I thought, maybe it would be a nice soft yarn to use for little face cloths. So I bought two rolls of hot pink bamboo yarn and knitted two lovely soft little cloths.
Grr I'm having trouble loading the photos..... I'll have to post them separately. But I'm really pleased with them. It is so much fun creating stuff. I just love it!!
Emily xoxo
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