Leftovers

There’s something about grandmothers and cooking: they just don’t know when to stop. In my family, we have a running joke about my grandmother. Every time there’s a family dinner, she’ll cook as many dishes as there are people, and then cook some more. And after the meal, when we’re all slouched in our chairs round and bloated after eating our own body weight, she will start to explain how really, when you think about it, she didn’t make that much. In fact, it was less of a meal and more of a “light snack.” “You see,” she’ll say, “I really only made the pot roast and the salad. But then I had leftover spinach from the salad, so of course I had to use it to make lasagna. And then I had leftover tomato sauce from the lasagna, so the only logical thing to do was to bake okra in it. And then there was the leftover basil…” But by this point we have already slipped into a food-induced coma.

I work part-time at a hippy-dippy vegan falafel restaurant that is also preoccupied with leftovers. It’s a cute little out-of-the-way place with delicious food and a huge following, and it prides itself on its no-waste policy. We scrape containers clean, we compost all our waste, and best of all, at the end of the day any leftover food is jarred and sold at a loss so it will be consumed.

Needless to say, I’ve accumulated quite a collection of  jars in my time there. What’s a girl to do with all those jars?

 

Dress them up, of course.

I know I said I wouldn’t start anything new until Matt’s sweater is finished, but stashbusting doesn’t count. A couple of years ago, I knit this colourful sweater, and ended up with a ton of leftover yarn. “No problem!” I thought, and crocheted a hippopotamus.With the leftover yarn from the hippopotamus, I made a jar cozy.With the yarn leftover from the jar cozy I’m going to  make… wait a minute. I am truly my grandmother’s child.

Happy the Hippo sure likes having a mug that brings out his skin tone, though.

 

Master programmer at work.

Of course Happy’s desktop would look like this.

I’ve been thinking a lot about leftovers lately because I’m planning a big move across the country for my grad studies, and I can’t bring my yarn with me. I’ll post about that soon (it’s taking up about 99% of my brainpower and energy at the moment), but for now,  the only solution is to knit everything, right away. Stashbusting, here I come!

What do you like to do with leftover yarn? Do you throw it away, keep it indefinitely, or do you have any go-to stashbusting projects?