Crocheting like Crazy!

The past couple of weeks I've been crocheting quite a bit. It all started with our trip at the beg. of the month. I wanted to take along a project to work on since I have to always be doing something and crocheting seemed like the perfect thing. I stuffed all my leftover cotton yarn in my carryon bag and worked on various items whenever I had a free moment.

Um. Well these I made when I got back home. They are actually two card cases I made from the leftover yarn from a sock project. The one on the left has a flap and is made with single crochet. The one on the right is open at the top and is single crocheted in the back loops only.

One of the greated bridal shower and wedding presents I received were handmade dishcloths. They are just so far superior to the ones you can buy at the store. I am constantly using them and am sure to do the laundry when I've gone through my supply so I don't have to use the regular ones. Here's a few I whipped up from some leftover yarn I had.

Here are some mini scrubbies. Supposedly you can use these as reusable cotton balls although I haven't tried that yet. I did use a blue one I made to scrub pototoes and that worked out great.

I ended up making several of these and gave them to Josh's mom and two sisters before we left town as Thank You gifts for everything they did for use during our visit. They can be used as face scrubbies or general household cleaning or scrubbing vegetables or whatever you can think of I guess.

This is the project I was most excited about but then I ran out of yarn for each one so I'll have to keep on the lookout for more. The problem is that most this yarn I bought quite a while ago so hopefully I'll be able to find some more. These are bath sponges. I'm curious to try them to see how well they work. Reading about them online some users complained that they were so thick that they never dried out. I'm sure that won't be a problem here though. When I hang up clothes to dry they are completely dry in an hour to two. I'll have to keep you posted.

So that's mostly everything. On our trip I ended up using up all the leftover bits and pieces I had but luckily back home I still had several large cones of thread so I still have a while to go before I completely run out. I'm sure most of these will end up as gifts. If you see something you like you may make a suggestion as to what you want. The funny thing is that I bought all this yarn ages ago to make dishcloths out of and yet I had never used any of them. A few I still had in the box and I know that I'd given several away. I could have been using them all these years and never did! I think what stopped me is that the pattern book I was using had you made 13" square cloths which take a long time and aren't very practical. When you are using a handmade dishcloth you can get away with a much smaller cloth and it works great because it is so thick that it really does make doing the dishes so much easier.

So now I know the trick is to make a smaller cloth in an easier pattern so they will be not only practical to make but to use as well.

Decorated Composition Notebooks

I had always wanted to try my hand at decorating composition notebooks but never had tried. When I made the plarn bags (shown below) that fit them perfectly I knew I had to decorate books to match the bags for the perfect presents. I actually just wrote an ehow article on it as well.

Plarn Tote Bags

The first time I saw items crocheted from plastic bags was probably 15 or 20 years ago at a booth at The Orange County Marketplace. It was such a novelty and everyone loved it. For some reason I never gave it a go until just under two weeks ago. My mom had seen some of her friends working on some and that reminded me about it. I searched high and low for instructions and figured out how to make the plastic bags into "plarn" and then I started crocheting away and ended up making one of these tote bags. I liked it so much that I made three more and then I gave them all away for birthday presents a few days ago. I'll work on instructions and post here when they are ready.

Little Quilts

One of the main advantages of residing in such a large house is that I'm finally able to go through all my boxes of treasures and make new discoveries. I came across a box a while ago with tons of Little Quilt fabric in it. Being overwhelmed and not knowing what to do with it I set it aside. A few days ago I decided to tackle it. First I sorted everything out. I was pleasantly surprised to find many quilts done and a few just needing the binding sewn on. I'm not sure what my mom and I were thinking when we bought all this fabric. Surely we had a plan. I decided that I'd just keep one quilt or kit each for me and pass the rest on. I started putting kits together with the remaining fabric. In addition to the panels we of course bought matching fabric for the backs and bindings.

If I ever make it to Atlanta, GA I will definantly be visiting the Little Quilts shop. They have super cute stuff that I've admired for many years.

Just listed some of the quilt kits on etsy. Hopefully some fellow fans of Little Quilts will find them. They are so cute.

Birthday Hankies

It was my uncle's (& landlord's) birthday a couple weeks ago and since he was in town I thought I'd better commemorate the occasion. Looked through my collection of origami boxes and found one that was covered in compasses - perfect since he spend a lot of time hiking. I embroidered his name on two handkerchiefs and wrapped them up. He always carries one with him so I figured he could always use more. Hope he gets a lot of use from them.

Photo Collage Greeting Cards

About a month ago my cousin let me in on a great thing she discovered - printing 4x6 photo collages at Wal-Mart! I had this idea to make photo cards for a friend and my mother in law from some pictures that I took of turtles since they both love them so I knew this was the perfect solution. I could pick a couple of the best photos and even include a greeting. I ended up using the same pics in both collages. I already had a stack of 5x7 white greeting cards with envelopes so I used those for the base. I trimmed each side of the photos and then mounted them on green patterned paper and then used my favorite deckle edge scissors to trim all the way around. They turned out great. Really simple but a fun way to incorporate several photos into a project without a lot of effort.

All done!

Here's all 20 hangers all crocheted up. I finished them during a road trip to CA and watching a Season of SuperNatural. I even used the brown variegated yarn on some for my hubby since I figured he probably didn't want to hang his coats on pink hangers. One skein did 7 hangers. Now off to my next project!