If you are looking for sustainable housing in Conway, AR, send me a message through the comment system. We are looking for neighbors who would like to live in an energy efficient, non-traditional, industrially reclaimed structure. Multiple single bedroom apartments are available with plenty of outdoor space (two side decks, one covered rooftop deck), and plenty of parking.

The spaces are located within one mile of Hendrix College and UCA (University of Central Arkansas), and the three times weekly farmer’s market. It is also within one half-mile of Axciom, downtown Conway, and Central Baptist College. Great for people who prefer to walk or bicycle to work or the grocery store. City services include high speed internet and recycling.

A few days ago, there was a tutorial on spinning newsprint into a type of yarn on the greenupgrader.com website.

The spools of newsprint on the site seem to have a really delicate yarn on them. Although I didn’t know what I was going to make with the yarn, I wanted to make some.

First I needed a spindle to spin with. After looking all over the internet for instructions, I put a hybrid of instructions together to write an instructable for a spindle. If you’ve never heard of it before, instructables.com is an open-source site for patterns, instructions, and how-to’s on almost anything you can dream up.

Here is my instructable on constructing a Drop Spindle. On the last page, there is a video from a crafty spinning website, The Art of Megan, that shows you how to spin wool.

After I had my new spindle, I started spinning. I noticed that the 1/2 inch strips of newspaper were creating a thicker yarn than what the tutorial indicated.

Thinking that my brand new spinning technique could be flawed a little bit, I kept spinning, trying to get the yarn a little thinner, but it kept tearing off on those attempts. Also, in cutting the newspaper, my strips could have been a little wider than 1/2 inch. Next time I spin newsprint, I’ll measure out an exact 1/2 inch for the strips.

I ended up getting a couple of spindlefulls of yarn from one section of the newspaper. One warning, my fingers turned black really quickly. The ink does rub off on your fingers, and then when knitting, on the tips of the needles. Amazingly the newsprint does not look smudged after spinning.

I knitted up this swatch on size 13 needles. It isn’t the most enjoyable stuff to knit, and I did get two tears in the swatch. One tear stuck back together after being slightly moistened, and the other just wants to completely unravel. Both of the tears happened in previously knitted rows, when I was working rows above the place of the tear.

Even though spun newsprint isn’t a perfect medium, the finished texture is amazing. I’m not quite sure when or how to use it since it needs to stay away from water. It would be good for a semi-transparent room divider, or a thick platter/place setting for dry goods only. I can’t get the stitch down small enough to obscure any stuffing behind the material.

How would you use hand spun newsprint?

Not much to say about it, just wanted to post a picture of the gift:

I’ll let you know how we like Eddie’s Cottages, too.

Ok! We have a functional internet connection, and we’re back to blogging.

When having a garage sale, the biggest help to you are your friends without traditional jobs. They can come over and man the till, or help you organize. One person cannot run a garage sale, because it is inevitable that during your busiest time someone will call and want to pick up one of your larger items they already paid for.

My sister Jen made a bunch of custom, adult-sized hula hoops, and charged $12 for them. I think she sold a couple. They are larger and heavier than the cheapie Chinese hula hoops at the stores. She even got my mother out and hula hooping. Here are some pictures of her showing off:

These are my favorite pictures:

Something weird happened at the sale. My mom brought stuff to sell, including a bunch of black fringe 80/20 acrylic/wool scarves. She said, “Do you want these in case you have to make a Jamaican wig?”

What kind of a question is that? Sarah, the only wig expert I know, made her feel better about it:

When I was in college, my mother always told me to go to the garage sales in Lincoln, especially the ones around the Country Club neighborhood.  I didn’t end up going to many until a couple of months ago, and that was to find one birthday present for my husband and for research.

What did my research unveil?  We are in some sort of recession.  Some ladies were getting together with friends to sell 2-3 mid-sized items and all of their newer seasonal shoes. People were getting rid of heirloom-quality hand  embroidered tableclothes by the pound.

This week I got to see the effect from the other side of the till.  I would say 75% of the people who bought things were buying them for someone else, a family member in need, a friend who has a similar collection, the man who bought 5 pairs of size 4 womens’ shorts.  Everyone is looking for some sort of baby clothes, and we had none.

The other observation that surprised me was the amount of elderly and non-english speaking folks really outweighed every other group.   We had a very large amount of newer immigrants buy items at the sale, and they are not afraid to ask for a lower price!  A lady from Syria bought up most of the plates for her sister.  An eastern european couple came back every day.  The last day, they only picked out from the “free” box, and even asked for a bag for their free stuff.  Before one Laotian couple would buy our old blender, they required a demonstration.

Some assumptions we had at our sale were that if someone would pay $.10 for a knickknacky thing, they’d pay $.25.  If they asked we’d come down, but that kept our change in quarters.  If there were multiple items, we’d say 10/$1.

Now for the embarrassing parts.  I had a lot of gift bags I had accumulated over the years.  I don’t want to pay to move them, so we sold them.  I kept my bags in pretty good shape, and people really bought them up.  We didn’t make that much money, but people seemed to think it was an interesting concept.  I even had a pile of tissue paper and wrote “Take what you need” by it.  Sometimes if stuff is free, people just hoard it.  This way, people pay a little for it, and want to get their investment back by actually using the items.

Final words of wisdom:

-candles do not sell, even new ones, unless they are large Yankee candles at least 3/4 of the way full, and even then you can’t get more than $1 for a used candle.

-no one wants a used 2-slot toaster, no matter how clean.  no one wants used luggage.  no one wants to buy unused  adult socks.

-if you have a Thursday-Friday-Saturday sale, Thursday and Saturday morning will be your busiest time.

Last week I finished a bag. It will be a gift for a friend, but in the past, I’ve made bags only to have them seriously get stretched out of shape later.

Last week, I also began bringing home the contents of my cubicle at work. Tyrone asked me, “Hey, isn’t that bag going to be a gift?”

“I’m just QA-ing it,” I replied. Quality assurance, quality control, I wanted to see that it could stand up to the strain, and stretch it out with heavy items, so delicate eggs and tomatoes wouldn’t have to do it.

Here are the pictures of the bag, and I am excited to say that one lucky reader is going to get it:

So what is next? Sunday I went out to a craft gathering where everyone was decoupaging tins and bowls with terriers and Bill Murray. It was a great time crafting with folks I don’t usually get to see to often. I also taught my friend Liz how to do the long-tail cast on method. She wasn’t looking for a new cast on, but once she saw how stretchy it was, she dug it.

Got a 10×10 inch square quilted in an hour last night, and did the same this morning.  I’ve got 16-6 inches on each side left to do before I can start finishing the quilt.  The coming days will involve some sort of business plan on what I can make quickly and possibly sell, but also what I can decrease in size to pack for the move.

Ok, now I have to go work out. HAHAH. That feels great to be saying at 10am.

Went out and had a nice time at Lincoln’s Earth Day festival. Sorry, no photos. My neighbor Barbara organized it all! I was happy to see that many people come out, and I even got tips on where I can dispose of my old computer parts.

This weekend, we had a really productive band practice. That’s right, the band is getting together for one last show, Friday May 2nd at Knickerbocker’s. You can listen to some of our tracks here.

I’ve got a craft backlog to blog about, but I figured I would give you this up-to-the-minute post on what I have been doing. I’m making a bag for Barbara. She’s really helped us to be super green with our front yard, composting most of our yard waste and allowing us to chip up and spread the rest. She’s really inspired me over the years to keep a low-water use landscape, so here is an in-progress shot:

I’m also working on a recycled project that may get me some money in the next few weeks. The idea has been bouncing around my head for weeks. I showed it to Tyrone mid-construction last night and he about died laughing.

It IS on a guitar because I’ve been practicing so much, and wanted to give you some sort of idea of size. It is meant to be a soft focus picture, because your still can’t really tell what it is yet. It is also made out of 3 different red recycled sweaters. I shrunk some mohair, and it really turned out stiff, which is great for this project.

I was hanging out with my friends at a coffee shop this weekend, making a coozie gift for someone’s birthday when my friend Sarah said, “I thought you were going to make me one of those?”

When I was done with the first, I started on the second. Here is a picture of it at play at the Lied Transplant Center/Hotel:

It isn’t the most interesting or luxurious of crafts, but darning socks, sewing holes, and re-attaching buttons are necessary tools against the “Made in China” trends, and combats buying more stuff.

After Tyrone and I had been dating for a couple of weeks, he wore an awesome striped shirt from the seventies in a mustard and light blue out on a date.  The shirt embodied his classic style, and I was enamored with it, right down to the hole that was beginning to appear on the shoulder.  I offered to fix it, and really enjoy fixing his clothes ever since.  It may really sound like an anti-feminist thing to say, but I really enjoy providing him with this outwardly physical form of affection.

But there is another reason.  Tyrone is no stranger to sewing his clothes.  Last night I put 4 new buttons on a blue shirt.  A closer look at the shirt showed blue thread reinforcing the arm hole, as well as thick white thread clinging on to the existing mismatched white buttons.  I know he appreciates it because he’s mended his favorite clothes too.

I mended four of my sweaters, 3 pairs of socks, and two of Ty’s shirts.  I had an urge I had not had before.  One of his shirts was a navy blue jersey knit material, and had already started to unravel in places.   I really wanted to fix the shirt in a contrasting bright red cross-stitch.  I didn’t but it may be something to experiment with in the future.  Mended clothes can sometimes look old or cheap, but there is a new trend with T-shirts from LA to stitch in contrasting thread.  Some neatly done cross stitching may up-cycle the garment and adds an additional layer of fashion, and attention to hand-embellished detail.

It was a fun thing to do and contemplate while watching the Project Runway finale, or maybe it is just the cold medicine talking.

My friends at the Star City Scene message board are talking about plastic bags vs. bring your own bag here.

This is a post dedicated to bringing your own bag…from recycled pants:

or from recycled plastic bags!

Classic bags: