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Year: 2018

Recycled Christmas Cards

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Merry Christmas! I have been recycling old Christmas cards into ornaments for years. I just love taking the beautiful old cards and repurposing them.

It is very easy and children especially can enjoy recycling the cards and crocheting around the edges. Here is the instructional tutorial on how I recycle the cards into these ornaments.

Also be advised that if you don’t want to crochet around the card edges, you can always use a craft needle and yarn to whip stitch around the edges for decorating.

Here are some of my creations for 2018.

Granny Christmas Tree Ornament

Cindy1 Comment

I saw this cute granny square tree ornament and just knew I had to try it.

The tree on the right was the first one I crocheted. I had trouble with the pattern and couldn’t get my stitch counts to come out to match the pattern. So I improvised and did my own thing to get the tree to come out looking okay.

I reached out to the pattern designer Squibbly Bups for the Granny Christmas Tree pattern to figure out the pattern as written. I heard back from her and found out she counts the Ch-1 as stitches so that is why I was off on my stitch counts. I re-worked the pattern which is the tree ornament on the left.

I also changed up the base of the final row on the tree to just work

Dollar Store Towel Set

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Here is a Dollar Store towel and 2-potholder set. I took these Dollar Store items and added some crocheted cotton to spice them up.

The brown Dollar Store towel was folded in half and a waffle towel topper pattern was added to the top. The free double layer waffle towel topper pattern can be found here. Super easy with no cutting, sewing or other prep needed before crocheting the towel topper onto the towel.

Here is a closeup of the potholders.

Grannies Square Blankets

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Another Ravelry member of our Warmth for Warriors group introduced me to this Grannies Square blanket pattern. The pattern from Doug Speeckaert features a repeating 2-row granny square pattern which looks great and lays flat. The free crochet pattern link to the pattern can be found here.

In this next photo of the center, you can see how you do a traditional granny square type stitching and then the next row is a fill-in row of double crochet stitches. I think this really helps to allow the blanket to lay flat and not ruffle.

The pattern works nicely for using scrap yarns for each row and then I crocheted a few rows in the same color of yarn to create my blanket. I also used two skeins of Red Heart Stripes in latte stripe for the first blanket. I crocheted both of my blankets to a lapghan size for use by Veteran’s in wheelchairs. Both blankets are 32 inches wide.

Here is one more blanket crocheted using this blanket pattern. I call this lapghan blanket Blues Grannie Square.

Towel Toppers for Charity

Cindy1 Comment

Crocheted towel toppers are an excellent charity item. They are quick to crochet and are a desired item for charity fundraisers. They also make excellent gifts.

I have several different free crochet patterns for making towel-toppers. Here is a link to all of my towel topper patterns.

The next few towels use the pointed-handle towel topper pattern. These dollar store towels which once you add the crocheted towel-topper, really make a nice handmade gift.

Another is one of the new Christmas towels at the Dollar Tree, which makes a great candidate for a towel topper as shown here. The jingle bell closure adds a bonus for a Christmas-themed gift.

Next is a Fall themed towel that I got on clearance.