Why My House is a Mess

This week I could claim my house is a mess because of our broken arm situation and the hubby being out of town, but the truth is that I am a pathological creator who would rather be writing or fiddling with fabric, seeds or dough than a mop.

Because I have had some intense quality time with my kids this week, today’s post is about my personal projects. Selfish, selfish me!

Here is what I saw each time I passed the table this week:

Many, many sweaters!

How can you pass that pile of awesome felted sweaters and not make something!?! I mean, I had already washed and felted them so they were just begging to be worked with. I couldn’t hold out forever so here are a few things I came up with. Yup, a grown up show-and-share.

Sweater-scrap flowers

I am planning to still make plenty more, I was just fiddling around. I think these flowers would be cute on clips or headbands, or even on coffee sleeves for one of those compulsory trips to the coffee mecca (you know where I mean!). The only problem with putting them on sleeves is that it might make a coffee cup tough to fit in a cup holder (time to switch to the taller venti size, I guess!)

All they need is a little embellishing and a few lattes!

These are somewhat charitable projects in that I bought the sweaters from a thrift store. Some of them were felted when I found them. I suppose that is why they wound up living at the thrift store in the first place. Another charitable project I completed today was a teddy-bear fleece cuff for the injured one’s sling strap. Cushy and warm. A twofer! 

I have made plenty of coffee sleeves before from recycled sweaters (I call them Greensleeves) with the girls for Christmas gifts, and the girls and I made some cute wreaths with some friends (see the photo below). I cut a bunch of squares to let the girls make some more wreaths. Good to have a starter kit ready for small hands-the youngest is particularly great at this.

Sweater wreath

Future sweater wreath

I decided to find more green uses for the leftover sweater material, and it turns out that it was just in time. These cute striped fingerless gloves (modeled by the injured one on her good hand) are great now that it is finally winter.

So cute, so cozy!

I also am about to start a few wine bottle bags from sweater sleeves. Practical and simple. The dog has asked that I not blog about the dog-sweater-from-recycled-sweater fail. I would have posted a picture of her but I know all of your dogs will just laugh.

A side note for those concerned for the welfare of the newly planted pallet garden. A perk of the pallet: we just picked the thing up and trucked it around to the garage. No frozen veggies!

I plan to keep making up these coffee sleeves. Look out, I may send one your way to keep your fingers and java toasty.

Some of our Christmas sleeves

Fun and functional

Anyway, that’s why my house is a mess. I’m going to run now, the ongoing marathon of make-up schoolwork calls. In the future, we really need to keep our kids in bubble wrap. Less hassle!

How would you use recycled sweaters? Let me know!