Tote Made From Plastic Grocery Bags (In Progress)

I found this website on knitting from plastic grocery bags and became intrigued. We have recently started using reusable cloth grocery bags, but we still have a few plastic ones lying around that hadn't yet made it into the recycle bin at the grocery store. So I decided to give this a try. It wasn't hard to cut the grocery bag up into strips for the "yarn", the only problem I really came into was when I tried to separate the two layers of plastic. They had gotten static and tended to cling together. As you can see from the picture above, the process of the actual knitting is simple. Just cast on for the width you want (I casted about 50 stitches onto size 7 needles), and garter stitch until it's twice as long as you want it tall... Because you're going to be folding it then stitching the sides together to make the tote. Then you just recast, make some handles, and stitch them on too.

There is also another method for cutting the bags into "yarn", which is easier to do and yields a bulkier, double-layer yarn. I'm using this technique to crochet a tote, and see which of the two is better. I chained as many stitches to make the bag the width I wanted using size M hook (I just held it up to a reusable tote and matched the width. Then you just single crochet until, again, it's twice as long as you want tall, chaining one at the end of the row. At least I think that's pretty much the jist of it. I'm still pretty new to the crochet world. There's another article here with more complicated instructions and how to change colors if you want to.

Thanks for reading!

Pickled Grapes from Smitten Kitchen

I just recently came across Smitten Kitchen, and boy I'm glad I did! The first (and only) recipe I've tried from this site so far is one for Pickled Grapes. I was intrigued by them, the husband turned his nose up at the idea. But during an impromptu 1:00 am grocery shopping trip, I decided to give them a go. I had most of the ingredients on hand, I just needed to get grapes and mustard seed. Oh, and I also used ground cinnamon. If/when I make this again, I'll have to try it with the cinnamon bark as described on SK, but making it with ground came out good too.

So here is the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, which was adapted from A Homemade Life, where it was adapted from a Susan Kaplan recipe. (Boy, that's a mouthful):

Ingredients:

1 lb seedless red or black grapes
1 Cup white wine vinegar
1 Cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons mustard seed
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 - 2 1/2" cinnamon stick, cut in half (I used maybe a Tbsp or so ground cinnamon)
1/4 teaspoon salt (I omitted the salt)

Method:

(I don't have pictures of the process, but it really is very easy)

Rinse the grapes and cut the stem end (SK calls this the "belly button") off, leaving a bit of the inner flesh exposed. I divided my prepared grapes into two pint jars.

Combine the rest of the ingredients into a saucepan and bring to a boil. At this point I let the mixture cool before pouring into the jars. When pouring I tried to make sure the peppercorns and mustard seeds were evenly distributed between the two jars.

Stick in the fridge and let sit for eight hours or overnight, and serve chilled.

Apparently you can pour the mixture in while it is hot for a softer, more intensely flavored grapeickle (grape-pickle, get it? Ha! Sometimes I think I'm so clever), but I was definitely seeking a more mild flavor, and cooling the solution first yields a milder, crunchier grapeickle.

They came out really good, and the flavor is a little hard for me to describe. They are sweet but not too sweet, mildly vinegary but not overpoweringly so, and have subtle but noticeable hints of spiciness from the pepper and cinnamon. I hope the husband likes them. He has yet to taste them but I think when he heard "pickled grape", he probably imagined a dill pickle with grape, which these are definitely not. They are their own animal, and fairly cheap especially if you can get grapes on sale. And they are pretty easy and quick to prepare. I'd say they are worth trying. SK suggested having them with a cheese platter, and I can certainly see how they would work well there. I think they are also good straight out of the jar.

Thanks for reading!

Kroger Reusable Bag Design Contest

Kroger is doing a contest right now for reusable bag designs. I submitted two designs, and I'd love it if you could hop on over there to vote for me! No registration is required.

Here are my two bags. Please click on the link or the image to get to the voting page:



Bag #1



Bag #2

Plus, if you do choose to sign up and design your own bag, you get a coupon loaded onto your Kroger store card for a free bag! That's pretty awesome, I think!

Thanks so much! And Thanks for reading!