Blog » Reduce, Re-use, ROCKET!

Kids, it's time for a fun story! 

Once upon a time, back in the year 2-ought-ought-2,  Aaron and I decided to go to the Riccarton Market in Christchurch, NZ.  What you do is, you take the bus into The Exchange (the fancypants name for 'the downtown bus terminal'), and then you take the #82 to Hei Hei, and get off when you see the racetrack.  The market is big (300+ stalls in the summer), and we were pretty excited to wander around the whole thing.

Here is one of the first things we found (and bought, post-haste): 

It's a rocket; it's a mirror.  What more could you (reasonably) ask?

We were less excited when it started raining.  And then way less excited when it started winding (that's "being windy", not "being twisty-turvy").  But... wait a minute... it's a MARKET!  So we searched around until we found a stall selling warm-n-wooly hats, and bought one to keep my wee head warm and dry.

It was not an ideal hat -- it was a bit too big, and made of some mad-scratchy wool.  And so after that one drizzly cold morning, it never got worn.  I found it the other day while looking for some gloves in our giant-box-o-warms (doesn't everyone who lives in a cold climate have one of those boxes, full of single-mittens and too-big hats?).  And I realized:  it's perfect!  It's exactly what I've been looking for!

I cut some holes in it, whipstitched the edges (to keep things from coming unravelled) and voila!   

My new fancy tea cozy!  It keeps the tea hot, and the pompom makes me laugh every time I see it.  So go take a look in your big-box-o-warms (or, if you don't have one:  that pile of clothes you never wear stuffed down into the corner of your closet) and see if you can't find a better use for some of it.   That oops-I-shrunk-it sweater may have a wonderful future as a set of placemats!