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Candy Cane Mini Christmas Stockings

Cindy1 Comment

Just finishing up this year’s mini Christmas stocking drive for Warmth for Warriors. Here are a few of the final ones I crocheted. I call these my candy cane stockings. I used this pattern for the 6 inch stockings but did work in both loops. I crocheted 2 rounds in each color and just carried the yarn colors inside the stocking to hide my color changes. Works out well and you can’t notice the color changes too much.

We had a very successful year of making mini Christmas stockings for the troops through Warmth for Warriors. In case you aren’t familiar with the organization, you can read more about them here. Last year over 3100 stockings were handcrafted and filled with little goodies for our troops. They were shipped to military troops as a small token of our appreciation to bring a bit of holiday cheer to them for Christmas. We haven’t gotten the final tally for the stockings made this year but I do know it was another great year.

Now we are busy handcrafting

Happy Halloween

CindyLeave a comment

Happy Halloween from My Recycled Bags! Just wanted to send out a greeting wishing everyone a happy and safe Halloween during these usual times. I know this isn’t a typical year by any means but hoping you can enjoy the day with your family.

Here is an recycled Halloween treat cup that you and your kids might enjoy making. It uses a yogurt container, some yarn and construction paper to decorate. Full details including some other recycled crafting ideas can be found here.

Happy Halloween!

Christmas Tree Dishcloth

Cindy2 Comments

I started working on some Christmas gifts and recently came across this pretty Christmas tree dishcloth pattern. The pattern features crocheted bobbles for the tree design and edging on the dishcloth.

One thing I found after I crocheted the first dishcloth was that the side edging had different stitch counts on either side of the cloth. One side had 2 stitches and the other had 3 (see photo below). I thought I made an error in the pattern but after frogging the pattern a few times and checking other crafters’ pictures, I found that all the dishcloths had this discrepancy.

So I set out to see if I couldn’t make both sides even and came up with some changes to the original dishcloth pattern.

Details on my version of the original crochet pattern:
Chain 34 and work 32 stitches across.

Recycled Plastic Messenger Book Bag

Cindy8 Comments

I crocheted this messenger book bag from recycled plastic Safeway bags. People ask me all the time how many bags it takes to crochet different projects of mine. I did a calculation on this project as I crocheted it. I found that I used about 3 bags for two full rounds on the crocheted body of the bag. Therefore I used about 39 bags to crochet the main body of this book bag. Overall I recycled about 60 plastic bags to crochet the messenger book bag.

I cut my plarn about 1 inch wide using the looping method to create my plastic bag yarn.

I crocheted 26 rows in half double crochet (HDC) before starting the flap. For the flap, I crocheted 12 rows in HDC before starting the decreases for the tapered flap. I crocheted a total of 25 rows and then added a edging of single crochet stitching around the edges of the flap. By adding the single crochet stitches, it helps even out the edges and makes for a smooth finish to the flap.

I crocheted my strap even on 6 stitches wide for a 35 inch long strap.

The original crochet pattern for the messenger bag is found here. It’s a free plarn crochet pattern and I just tweaked it a bit to make this smaller book bag of 14″ wide by 11.5″ long. The original crochet pattern makes a