Stashbusting Market Bags

I made a discovery lately.  A crochet market bag is the best way to use up random balls of sock yarn in my stash!  I'm on my third ball of Patons kroy Socks FX that has been in my stash for years, this time in Cameo Colors (44 g, 146 yards).  I am so happy to have a pattern that I love to create darling crochet grocery bags.  (This is a free pattern. You will have to check out to download the pattern, but no payment is due since the cost is $0.00) 

Since you've head me talk about this pattern twice now, I'll just say that I completed the bag with 12 rows in the last step before the decreases when 14 g of yarn remained.

This project was one of the last ones I wanted to complete before I packed up and moved away from Evanston, IL.  Somehow, no matter how many rows I add before starting the decreases I end up with 5 g of yarn left over!  This is enough yarn for a hexipuff... (another project that I've let hibernate for way too long.)  

I love this pattern so much that I have to really hold myself back to not buy more skeins of Kroy Sock FX!  I have to keep reminding myself that I'm trying to solve my stash problem, not make things worse.  I do have other yarns in my stash that would work great with this pattern so I have a feeling that I will be making more of these crochet market bags coming up.

These bags look small but they hold so much stuff!  I've shown them holding 6 cans of food, gallons of milk and now two 2L bottles of soda.  These are perfect to use as reusable grocery bags.