What I've been up to

Well, first of all, I've been dealing with the near-record January snowfall (around 40" ... just in January) here outside of Cleveland. The snow has come regularly in large quantities with no thaws in between, which is why both sides of my driveway look like this:


The snow is so deep that Lazy Kid hasn't been able to get out to play, since every time she tries she either gets stuck in a waist-deep drift or loses one of her boots somewhere in the side yard. This means we're all going stir-crazy, which may be why these have been so much fun:

I went stash-diving and came up with a whole bunch of kitchen cotton and leftover Paton's Grace mercerized cotton, most of which has been crocheted into reusable shopping bags. I made these two ... on Sunday. God, I love crochet. It's fast and uses lots of yarn, which is a good combination when trying to clear out stash.

You can find the pattern for the top bag here: http://shepherdscrookcrochet.blogspot.com/2008/05/she-sells-sea-shells.html

And the second bag here: http://momles.blogspot.com/2008/05/old-fashioned-string-bag.html

The first bag is cuter, but smaller, while the second bag holds a lot more but looks more utilitarian. The load in the second one during the photo shoot: fourteen library books and seven CDs. The librarians were impressed when I got there - it was like one of those clown cars where more and more people keep getting out, only in my case it was almost-overdue library materials.

I have a third bag in process that should be finished tonight or tomorrow, and it's both gigantic and a HUGE suck on my yarn supply, so this may be my last one for a while. Unless I can make shopping bags out of leftover sock yarn ... hmm ...