This is the 16th Thanksgiving that this blog is celebrating. I can’t believe it’s been that many years since I first started My Recycled Bags back in 2007. But time flies as they say and even faster now that I am older.
Wishing everyone a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving!
A few months ago I shared that I dyed my first batch of wool yarn using grape Kool-Aid. I dyed just one white skein of wool yarn in my first attempt. You can read the full post here about how I dyed the yarn using Kool-Aid. I was really happy how my test came out and here are the baby hats I crocheted using that yarn.
First I crocheted this ribbed band baby hat. The free crochet pattern is found here. I used a G (4.25 mm) crochet hook for this project and did add few extra rows of the ribbing to reach a hat length of 5 inches long.
Next hat was crocheted using the
I picked up a few of the Halloween kitchen towels at Dollar Tree to add towel toppers to them. These themed towels are a fun and quick project that I am using for a upcoming fundraiser.
The towel topper is added to the towel by simply folding it in half and crocheting along the top edge. No cutting or sewing is needed. The first row is challenging but using a fine point steel crochet hook really helps. Once that first row is complete, the rest of the pattern works up very quickly. The free crochet pattern is found
I shared last month that I was working on a new crocheted recycled tote bag. I call this recycled bag my harvest tote bag. I used mainly white retail bags for the tote but added orange and black bags to create a Halloween harvest themed tote.
As you can imagine, orange and black plastic bags are hard to come by. So with such few of these bags available, I was only able to use them sparely in crocheting this recycled tote bag project. I used the free recycled grocery tote pattern to crochet the project. Just follow the original pattern with the following changes. The harvest stripes were crocheted with one round of black plarn followed by four rounds with orange plarn and then one more round using black plarn. My plarn (plastic bag yarn) is made by
I crocheted this baby dog lovey using Aggie May’s round ripple blanket pattern. I started with 4 rounds using aran cream yarn for the center of the lovey. An important tip is to use the same color for center of lovey as the animal so you can hide the joining. The dog lovey pattern is available
free here.
I first crocheted the round ripple blanket to 21 inches wide. Some loveys are smaller but I like it a little bigger to accommodate the dog head. Here is the lovey blanket before adding the dog to the center.
Next is a photo of the head after I added the muzzle and nose. I had to play around with it quite a bit to get everything lined up and get the nose just right.
Here is a closeup of the dog lovey below.
Our local Stitchers group was asked to make some baby blankets for the hospital nursery. I chose this bobble baby blanket pattern to crochet for the hospital charity. There are many different sizes you can make using this pattern. I started out by chaining 133 stitches using a H (5 mm) hook to begin the crochet pattern with a single strand of yarn.
Crocheting the bobbles for me was very labor intensive and hard on my hands. So rather than having bobbles every 4th row, I only crocheted two rows of bobbles on the ends of the blanket. The remainder of the blanket is worked in half double crochet (HDC).
Here is a closeup of one edge of the baby blanket.
I started crocheting a new plastic bag aka plarn project. I am using one of my original plastic bag tote patterns to crochet this bag. The pattern features a single crochet base so it’s nice and sturdy for groceries or other such needs.
I still have plenty of old plastic bags on hand but I don’t collect as any as I used to. Many areas and stores don’t use the thinner plastic retail bags any longer. This ball of plastic bag yarn was made by cutting the plastic retail sacks in 1 inch strips using the looping method.
Here is my progress so far in the photo below.
This post is about my test of dyeing wool yarn using Kool-Aid. This is my first time dyeing wool yarn using Kool-Aid. I used a small 50 gram skein of 100% wool yarn from Thorobred in white for this test. Here are before and after photos of this dyeing test.
I used the Woolfest bag method to dye my wool yarn. I love that it just uses the sun’s power to work the magic of dyeing the yarn.
Here is how I processed my yarn. I unwound the skein of yarn and unfortunately found it had several breaks and wasn’t a continuous strand of yarn. That is why you see a few separate pieces hanging to dry in later photos.
I used grape Kool-Aid in a gallon sized ziplock baggie for this test. I added one packet of Kool-Aid to a small amount of water in the baggie with gloves on. I then added more lukewarm water about halfway to fill the baggie as shown in the photo below. Next I mixed it around and added dampen yarn. With my gloved hands, I mixed up the yarn and swished it around to get all the yarn wet and colored. Next I placed the baggie flat in the warm sun to dye for about 3 hours. I did squeeze the yarn and swish it around a bit a few times just to make sure it would all get dyed from the Kool-Aid.
After 3 hours out in the summer sun, I rinsed the yarn gently in lukewarm and then cool water as not to shock the yarn. As suggested, let the yarn cool down and then rinse it until the water runs clear. Here is a photo of the yarn after rinsing.
I meant to post my patriotic red, white, and blue rectangle granny for the fourth of July but got distracted. So a few days late but in honor of our Country’s freedom, here is my Veteran’s honor blanket.
This blanket was crocheted for the local Veteran’s outreach program and will be given to a Veteran who needs a blanket.
Finished size of this rectangle granny blanket is 40 inches by 50. I chained 41 to start and used this free rectangle granny blanket pattern from Suzetta Williams. I have made this pattern before and have a few modifications that you are read more about here.
Below is a closeup of a corner that shows the edging.
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