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Category: Great Sites & Causes

Earth Day 2016

Cindy2 Comments

Happy Earth Day! April 22, 2016 is the 46th year of celebrating Earth Day. Earth Day is not just about one day a year but rather to bring focus on our Earth and keep it going all year long. Whether you are planting a tree, attending a rally, picking up litter, recycling materials or bringing awareness to our precious Earth in some other way, the key is to DO something.

As they say, every little bit helps and our Earth needs every one of us to do our part. If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know I love to recycle materials and use them to create new and useful items. I recycle plastic bags, plastic packaging, t-shirts, old linens, cassette and video tapes, and denim jeans. I also reclaim yarn from old sweaters and repurpose plastic lids, rings and old purse handles. I try and do my part which I know is a small thing and again when we all do a little, it can make a big difference.

So on this Earth Day 2016, try recycling, repurposing, or reusing something. If you need ideas, I have free tutorials and patterns on how to use many different recycled materials on my blog. If you have questions,

Mother Bear Hoodie

Cindy6 Comments

I am crocheting teddy bears for the Mother Bear Project and have some extra clothing ideas to share. I sent for the crocheted seamless bear pattern and found the pattern very easy to follow with lots of opportunities to make variations on the bear’s clothing. A group over at Ravelry is having a KAL/CAL for the Mother Bears and there are some amazing ideas being shared over there if you’d like to check it out. Here is the link to the group.


After seeing another crafter make an adorable hoodie, I knew I just had to make a bear with a hoodie too. If you knit there are instructions for the Bears in the Hood found here but I only crochet so I had to improvise and create a hoodie for my bear.

So after a little trial and error here are the pattern details for a crocheted Mother Bear hoodie.

Crocheted Mini Christmas Socks

Cindy1 Comment

I’ve been busy crocheting more mini Christmas socks for the Warmth for Warrior stocking drive. I have been involved in the campaign to make little Christmas stockings for the troops which are filled with small items for our troops for several years now. As you can see below, I have crocheted these mainly using yarn but in the center you will see that I have a recycled denim and plastic bag “plarn” socks too. It’s fun to mix and match the yarns and materials to make the stockings each year.

I mainly use this little Christmas stocking pattern to crochet the socks with just a few changes. I crochet the stockings to 6 inches so I decrease the number of rounds in the original crochet sock pattern by

Baby Ribbed Band Hats

Cindy13 Comments

I have been crocheting purple baby hats for the PURPLE baby crying awareness campaign. PURPLE Crying is a program to help parents, caregivers and others understand this normal increased crying in healthy infants and prevent abuse such as shaken baby syndrome.

Details for the hat drive can be found here. They do ask that the hats be at least 50% purple in color and be simple with no straps or hanging pom poms etc.

Here is the baby size hat pattern that I adapted from the adult crochet hat pattern for this project. I have options in the pattern directions below for a 3-month old baby, newborn, and a preemie sized hat.

Enjoy the free crochet pattern and I hope you will support this is very important baby awareness campaign by crocheting or knitting a purple hat.

Baby Striped and Ribbed Band Hat Pattern

Finished baby ribbed hat measures:
3-month old = 14 inch circumference by 6 inches long with WW yarn
Newborn = 13″ cir by 5-1/2″ long with WW yarn
Preemie = 11″ cir by 4-1/2″ long with Aran yarn

Hooks:
H (5 mm) US sized crochet hook for 3-month baby
G (4 mm) US sized crochet hook for newborn and preemie babies

Changes for preemie size baby hat shown in italicized text below.

Materials: 1 ounce Worsted Medium Weight or Aran Yarn
(1 oz of yarn for solid color and 1/2 oz of contrasting yarn for stripes)

With main yarn color, Ch 3 and join to form ring. Hat pattern is worked in the round without turning.

Rnd 1
Ch 2, work 11 Hdc in ring and join to beg Ch-2. (12)
(Ch-2 counts as first Hdc st.)

My Useful Ideas

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I have been working a new venture and wanted to take this opportunity to introduce my new blog My Useful Ideas.com

My Useful Ideas is a blog where ideas will be shared that are designed to save you money, help you solve a problem, answer a question, fix a problem, explain how to deal with a situation, and generally help you out. I am not an expert but will share with you ideas and solutions that I have found work and that are helpful in everyday use. Some of the ideas are very basic and which you may have read about in the past but I write to share my experiences and hopefully help out someone who may have not had to face the same challenge yet in their life.

My new blog will allow me to have a place where I can share my non-crafting ideas and keep this blog more for recycled crafting and crocheted craft projects. It is my plan to share helpful ideas for everyday living and beyond. Topics will include everyday challenges such as