Pattern Review: Crochet Mesh Grocery Tote

I spent this past weekend babysitting my 6 year old nephew and 3 year old niece. 

My brother wanted to take his wife on a weekend trip for their 10 year anniversary, so I stayed at his house and took care of two little kids (mostly) by myself for about 48 hours. 

It was exhausting, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Those two are really good kids, and we had so much fun doing Avengers training (obstacle courses), movie nights (now I have songs from Cinderella stuck in my head), and "cooking" (they have the best collection of play food I've ever seen). Super fun. :-)

Leading up to this weekend, I was trying to think of fun things to do with them. I wanted to do sun-print paper with them, but the store was sold out of it (noooooooo). I brought my baseball glove, but with the heat we didn't even go outside. But I did bring one winner.

Crochet bags. 

Who knew kids would get so excited about crocheted bags? I had originally planned to take them to the library, and the kids could use these to bring home all their books. I handed my nephew his and he said "Wait, these are ours to keep?!" Goof.

They used them all weekend to carry around books, stuffed animals, play food, all sorts of things. They even just snuggled with the bags like a blanket for a little bit. I had put a colouring book in each, but the bags themselves were way bigger hits than those.

Nice.

So I figured I'd share the pattern I used for these bags, in case anyone else needs a quick and easy gift for easy-to-please kids. I've also given this bag as a gift to my mother - I have two of them, and was using one around her, and she loved it. They work so well, and you can fit so much stuff in it since it stretches like crazy. I've used mine as market bags, baseball-gear bags, beach bags, craft supply bags, and probably others that I can't think of now.

I used this market bag pattern from Just Be Crafty. I found it on Pinterest, tried it, and it quickly became my favourite bag pattern. I use standard Sugar n' Cream cotton yarn so that they're easy to clean.

To make different coloured handles, I switch colours at row 36.

To make kid-sized bags, I skipped rows 17-24. To make a long handle (for a messenger-style bag), I just rows of 5 hdc until I got the length I wanted, and slip stitched it to the opposite side of the bag. 

Easy peasy!

That's really all I've got right now. I'm still pretty tired from this weekend, so this post is going to be a little short. 

Until next time! :-)

Blackberry Banana Bread Recipe (or B³ Recipe)

I love picking berries.

Like, a lot.

When we moved to our apartment in the city here two years ago, I was so excited to see blackberry bushes by our parking area. It was such a treat to pick a few and snack on them whenever we'd get into the car. I never went out and actually picked a bunch of them, though.

Until now. 

Look at all those berries! 

I had a banana on its way out in the cupboard, and I needed to do something with it quickly. I could use it to make my Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies, but my husband isn't always a fan when I "mess with the classics," especially when it's his precious Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

BUT TOO BAD, because if there's one thing I love more than berry picking, it's experimentation when I bake.

So why not try to mix these berries with my banana?

Naturally, this line of thought led to....

Yum, yum, yum! It's so good, and the berries are so tart and juicy - so perfect! 

I only used two bananas in it, one of them being green (I couldn't wait for it to turn), so the banana flavour is very slight, but I think that's good - it doesn't overpower the berries. I had made Banana-Pineapple Bread about a year ago, and you couldn't taste the pineapple for all the banana. Such sadness.

Since this was a winner, I decided I'd share it with the world! THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW OF THIS DELICIOUSNESS. I adapted the recipe from my standard Banana Bread recipe, which I adapted from one I found in one of my random cookbooks (I rarely use the recipes in cookbooks without fiddling with them somehow). So here you go!

Blackberry Banana Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

¾ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2-3 mashed bananas

1-2 cups blackberries

Preheat the oven to 350° and grease a loaf pan.

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Mix the sugars, butter, eggs, vanilla, and bananas in a large bowl. Slowly add in the flour mixture and combine (I use the Alton Brown ⅓ method - add in ⅓ of the dry ingredients at a time). Mix until moistened, but don't overmix. The batter will be lumpy.

Fold in the blackberries. You can get a little zealous here, since blackberries are so fragile. The more you mix, the more the berries will break up, and you might end up with a swirly bread - still delicious, I'm sure!

(This is as swirly as mine got - not too much)

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow the bread to cool outside of its pan.

This bread is so tasty, I keep having to stop myself from eating it all! I haven't even had it with butter yet, but I really need to.

Of course, there was unintended misery that came with this bread. We live in an attic apartment, so in the summer it gets hot. 

Like really hot.

There is only one window in the apartment that will hold an air conditioner, but that window is right next to a stairwell, so all the cool air just sinks down there. I really honestly don't even know why we turn the air conditioner on - I don't think it helps one ounce. We have fans, but they really just blow the hot air around if it gets too bad.

So having the oven on in the apartment rose the temperature in my apartment by about 5°, which is horribly miserable. 

75° outside.

83° inside.

Awful.

I get so bad when I'm too hot. I really just turn into a massive baby, whining and being generally crabby. It irritates me so much to be sweating like crazy when all you're doing is sitting on the couch. That's why as we look for a house, my husband and I refuse to even entertain those that don't have central air. Bleh. 

In any case, I hope you enjoy the bread!! Until next time! Stay cool!

DIY Woven Crocheted Bath Mat

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!

And to my beautiful neighbours to the north:

HAPPY (belated) CANADA DAY!!

I hope everyone has stayed safe but still partied their little patriotic hearts out!! I'm currently writing this while I listen to the fireworks that have been going off in my city for at least five hours (who starts shooting fireworks in daylight?!). My apartment is starting to smell a little bit sulphurous (all my windows are open since I don't have AC), and my head is starting to hurt, but what're you gonna do? My kitties are a little stressed out, but they're making do. Here's sending good thoughts to your own pets (if you have them) - fireworks can be so stressful for animals. 

Poor little guys.

Anyways, I have lots of things to report, including a little tutorial! 

First, I want you to look at my knitting bag, because it makes me laugh all the time. 

My mom and I went to an estate sale a few months back, and I laughed so hard at this that she bought it for me.

The best part is it's machine embroidered, so someone programmed a kangaroo sitting on knitting needles into their embroidery machine.

Beautiful. I just love it.

Second, I finally got something that I've been wanting and searching for for months. 

Amazon is sold out of Johanna Basford's two colouring books every single time I look, and it was getting so frustrating. I finally walked by them at Barnes and Noble, though. I considered buying her other book (Secret Garden), but it seems to have more of an activity book-feel to it (there are several pages where it tells you to complete the drawings, and I'm just not comfortable enough with my art skills). This one is almost strictly colouring, and I LOVE it!! I've honestly been carrying it everywhere. My husband ran a 25k this morning (SO PROUD OF HIM), and I took this to the race and coloured while he ran. I even pulled out my Prismacolors from high school and was playing with those. 

I love blending. 

I will need some new coloured pencils soon, but everything I've been reading about Prismacolors since they started being manufactured in Mexico is pretty bad, so I may have to find a new brand. Any suggestions would be really helpful!! 

If you're interested in what people do with some of the pictures in Johanna Basford's books, I'd recommend searching just her name on Pinterest - people have done some really amazing things with her pictures!! They're so inspirational, even if I know I'll never make it to that level.

Okay, now the moment you've all been waiting for, I'm sure. The tutorial. 

I finally finished my crochet bath mat.

But bath mats are like $5 - why wouldn't you just buy one?

Good question! I don't like the bath mats you buy at the store because of their rubberized bottoms. That means that you can't wash it well in the washing machine, and it gets all mouldy and gross. I hate them so much. Plus my cat barfed on my last one, and so I've just been using a towel on the floor like a bachelor. 

So I decided that if I just crochet my own out of cotton yarn, I could machine wash it as much as I want! 

*Note: I actually have yet to machine wash it, so I don't know how it's going to work out. But I'm optimistic.*

Let's do this.

So I used a little less than four full balls of each colour of my cotton yarn. It's the 70.9g balls of Lily Sugar'n Cream yarn, and I'm pretty sure I got mine for really cheap at Michael's. The green colour I used is called "Sage Green," and the purple is "Hot Purple." What a weird colour name. 

My husband and I couldn't agree on the colours, so I just picked my favourite colour (purple) and his (green) and went with it. They actually look really nice together. 

You'll also need another ball for the border, but whether that's one of your main colours or a different one is up to you. I used a cream scrap cotton.

So I learned something about myself while I made this bath mat. 

Apparently, I'm not very good at following my own patterns. 

I thought I had all the measurements and everything down, but it all turned out wonky in the end. If you're trying to do this, I would go with the measurements system instead of the row counting one - I went with the latter, and, like I said, I don't know where I went wrong, but I definitely messed up. 

My goal was to make a bath mat that measured 27" x 18". I decided which colour would be my length strips (purple), and which would be my width (green). I made 6 purple strips that measured 3" x 27", and 9 green strips that measured 3" x 18". In the end, I only used 8 of the 9 green strips, but the mat still measured out to be 27" x 19.5". I don't know - if you do this just be flexible and remember that frogging is always an option (as per my last post). 

I double crocheted my strips (for speed), but you could certainly knit them or do a fancier stitch (I'm considering making a rug in a puff stitch because I think that would feel so good to walk on, but it would also use up A LOT of yarn).

Once I had all my strips done, I connected them by just single crocheting the ends together, as you can see in the picture. I connected all the purple strips at both ends, but the green only at one end (it actually made the weaving part easier, I think). 

Once all that's done, I placed my long strips on top of my short ones. 

Hooray for weaving!

Don't worry if the strips get a little scrunched (like my bottom row). Once they're all secured you can fix that really easily.

After I finished weaving, I single crocheted the open end of the green strips together. This part was a little tricky, but certainly not the worst thing I've ever crocheted. 

Once all that was done, I just took my cream scrap cotton yarn and single crocheted a border, going through both layers - the green and the purple - in order to secure them together. It doesn't look the prettiest, but I've always been more of a fan of functionality over looks in my crochet (which is really just my justification for not being very good, haha). If you wanted, you could do a fancy scalloped border or something - that would look cute. :-)

Once the border was done and I weaved in the last of my ends (which took no time at all, since I'm a big proponent of just crocheting on top of the ends), the mat was ready!

It's very absorbent, but also a little slow to dry, so be warned. Although, with it looking this cute, you could always hang it out on the line in the summertime and dry it faster (and the sun will help keep it clean, as well!). 

My husband likes it - he said it looked too good to step on.

I told him that I worked too hard on it for it not to be stepped on. 

Once I machine wash it (probably this weekend) I'll report back on how it held up. There's always that fear that it'll all come apart in the wash (at least I have that fear).  So until then, celebrate the summer holidays safely!