A customer asked me if I could crochet her a large plastic bag tote to store her paper for recycling. She wanted a very large tote bag 18 inches wide, with a 7 inches base and 12 inches tall. Of course it had to have handles for carrying and be made from recycled plastic bags. I love a challenge and to crochet such a recycled tote bag was fun.
I used around 90 recycled plastic sacks cut 1 inch wide to complete this recycled paper holding tote. I used the double strand plarn making method to crochet this tote. Here are a few photos of the completed bag.
Here is a photo of the recycled tote bag laying flat.
Here is a new baby hat pattern that features a double post ribbing. These little hats work up very quickly and make wonderful gifts and items for donations. I just recently crocheted these baby hats for our local hospital nursery. They have been requesting more handmade hats for the newborns and I always love a good reason to crochet more baby hats.
Here are a few more crocheted hats with the double post ribbing.
This pattern is a variation of my original ribbed band baby hat. I am going to post the full pattern here for convenience. That way you just have to scroll down to the complete double post baby hat pattern below. For a preemie size hat directions, please refer back to the original pattern as I only posted newborn and 3 month old baby sizes in the pattern below. Also the original pattern includes directions on how to crochet a striped hat using two different colors of yarns.
Double Post Baby 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
Small newborn = 12″ cir by 4.75″ long with DK yarn
Hooks:
H (5 mm) US sized crochet hook for 3-month baby
G (4 mm) US sized crochet hook for newborn
Materials: 1 ounce Worsted Medium Weight or Aran Yarn
Ch 3 and join to form ring. Hat pattern is worked in the round without turning.
Need a carrying case or sleeve for your laptop? Do you have a whole bunch of plastic bags that you’d like to recycle? Well you are in luck as here is a recycled plastic bag yarn (plarn) project for crocheting a laptop computer sleeve. This pattern uses up about 63 plastic retail sacks and creates a nice and sturdy carrying case for a laptop. The laptop shown is 15 inches wide by 10.5 inches and 1.5 inches deep.
As you can see the laptop fits in nicely and the holds the weigh just fine for carrying.
Should you have a larger or smaller laptop or tablet, just adjust the pattern by chaining additional stitches to start (or less) and crochet extra rounds to get the desired length you need. As always the free crochet pattern is found below.
Laptop Computer Sleeve Pattern
Materials needed:
Approx. 63 plastic grocery bags cut 1 inch wide
Here is my picture tutorial on how to make plarn from recycled plastic bags.
Hook: “K” (6.5 mm) crochet hook
Description: Recycled laptop computer sleeve
Sleeve case measures 16” wide and 12” long with 5” handles
Directions:
Using K hook, Ch 40.
Happy New Year Everyone!
2018 was a great year for our crafting for Warmth for Warriors. As you may know, I head up the Warmth for Warriors group on Ravelry. Each year we knit and crochet warm, wool hats for our soldiers serving overseas and for soldiers and veterans here at home. We also make and collect small handmade Christmas stockings. The little stockings are stuffed by the Warmth for Warriors organization with small soaps, toiletries, and candies and shipped overseas to our troops as a little Christmas gifts.
We just received the final counts for last year on our hat and mini Christmas stocking drives. Warmth for Warriors received 3,295 wool hats and 877 acrylic hats in 2018 for a grand total of 4,172 hats. 3,746 hats were received in 2017.
As for the mini Christmas stocking drive the total number of stockings received in 2018 was 3,648! We blew out our achievement for 2017 which was 2,819 stockings.
Thank you all for your support of Warmth for Warriors for our troops.
We are just kicking off the 2019 charity crafting drives for Warmth for Warriors (W4W) this month.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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