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In the course of looking through thrift shops for yarn and fabric and other supplies I sometimes come accross some really neat older things which I give to my favorite Ebay seller to sell for me. Recently I found a stack of vintage crochet books and she has just put them in her Ebay store. So, go take a look and see what I found!

Vintage Crochet Books

Comfort-Ghan

The comfort-ghan I've been working on is finally done! It was a project I was doing for my Yahoo group All Crafts 4 Charity. Many from the group sent me squares and I joined them together. It wasa real learning experience working with different patterns, guages ect. Some of the squares are also knitted.

More Finger Puppets

Wow, I'm having a good time with these finger puppets! I'm working on a few original patterns for finger puppets and may haveone or two to post next week, but for now similar patterns can be found at this link.

My First Ever Finger Puppet

Ok, it's a bit blurry but you try holding something up with one hand and taking a picture of it with the other. I took four pictures and this was the best. The challenge in the CraftingForACause Yahoo group is to make finger puppets for children undergoing cancer treatment and this handsome dragon is my first attempt. Although I didn't follow it exactly and my dragons ears are a bit lopsided the pattern can be found here. On the same page you can also find the knight, his white charger and the poor damsel in distress.

Happy Easter...

... to all my readers who celebrate it. I'm rather impatiantly waiting for the last of my children to show up. That's my daughter and her family. Everyone else is here, the hams in the oven and her brothers are playing video games. The grandbabies (who aren't babies anymore) love playing games with their uncles. My six foot tall baby of the family is going through my cabinets for some reason that I can't fathom.

It's so good to have all three of my kids here at the same time. It happens so rarely. My boys are both in college and between their classes and jobs it's hard to arrange times like this. My daughter lives about three blocks from me which is great, I get to see the grands frequently.

Well, my daughter and her family just showed up, so again Happy Easter and let me know by clicking on the comment below how your Easter went.

Yahoo Groups for the Charity Crafter

So far 80 people have answered that they do 90 - 100% of their crafting for charity in my poll. That is so awesome, of course, it's actually 79 because one of them was me (yep I answered my own poll!!). I know many of my readers come from my Yahoo groups, so you may already belong to these groups, but for those of you that don't and may be interested, these are some of my favorites that deal mainly with crafting for charity. This is by no means a complete list so if none of these fit your needs do a search to find one that does.

All_Crafts_4_Charity This group highlights a different charity each month. You don't have to contribute to every charity, they just ask that you contribute to at least one each year. This is absolutely my favorite, it's an active group with a good amount of email every day.

bevs-charity-challenge You challenge yourself in this group. Set your goal for the rest of the year and get support and encouragement from the group. I really enjoy being a part of this group.

CaringforCooper Cooper Hospital is in a very depressed area in Camden NJ. The need is great for the babies born there. This group collects items for newborns and preemies.

CraftingForACause Supports three different charities. Pine Ridge Reservation, UC Davis Pediatric Cancer Infusion Center in Sacramento CA and those suffering with traumatic Brain injury at the Hartwyck At Oak Tree Hospital in Edison NJ

Kaps4Karing Collects Caps and other items for various charities.

LoomingAngels For those of you that use knitting looms!

HeartStringsQuiltProject Everything is string quilts! Lots of quilt making chatter. Donate your string quilts to your favorite local charity. You can also make blocks and send them in or volunteer to join blocks or quilt tops someone else made. This is my favorite quilting group.

Do you belong to an online charity crafting group that you'd like everyone to know about. Leave a comment. Also, check the comments to see if there's been more added!

Sew Drawstring Bags for our Troops!

Today is National Quilt Day and someone in one of my groups posted this link so I thought I would share. This is a great project to help our troops! I could tell you all about it but the website does it for me. A great way to celebrate the day! Free pattern. Check it out.

The Creative Thimble

Just Rambling 3/15/2008

I know it's been awhile but I really have nothing to show you right now. I had a really busy week and not much time to craft! I have been working on a project for one of my Yahoo groups All_Crafts_4_Charity. Many people in the group are sending me 7" squares and I'm going to be putting them together for an afghan and baby blanket. What little bit of time I've had has been spent on that. I have the whole weekend off and I'm hoping to get some quilting done. It's a rainy, nasty day today but at least it's not snowing. I think it's going to be a great day to stay inside and sew!

I've been taking some patterns over to my favorite ebay seller. She lists them for me as well as a lot of her own in her store Toni's Craft Room. Toni is a wonderful person and a great ebay seller. When you check out her store, check out her feedback and you'll see what I mean. She has lots of great craft and sewing patterns and craft books!

Sunflower Lap-Ghan Free Crochet Pattern

This is a product of serendipity. I bought the wrong yarn!! I was buying it for a sweater pattern but bought worsted weight instead of sport yarn. Not exactly having unlimited funds I had to come up with some way to use it. So my kids sunflower sweater became a lap-ghan and I love how it came out.

Finished size 30 X 42

Gauge: I used a J hook and the squares came out to 6 1/2"

Materials:

about 12 oz royal blue

about 6-8 oz sunflower yellow

about 3-4 oz green

small amount of brown

These are approx. since some of it was partial skeins

Make 24 squares

Rnd 1: With brown, Ch 4 and join, ch 3 (counts as 1st dc) 15 dc and join to top of ch 3, 16 dc

Rnd 2: With yellow, Join to any dc ch 4 (counts as dc, ch 1) *dc, ch 1 in each dc around, 16 ch1 spaces

Rnd 3: With green, Join in any space, ch 3, in same space 2 dc, ch2, 3 dc, ch1, *sk next ch 1 sp, 3dc in next sp ch1, sk next st, 3dc, ch2, 3 dc, ch1 repeat from * twice, sk space, 3 dc ch 1 and join.

Rnd 4: With blue, Join in any corner, ch 3, 2dc, ch 2, 3 dc, ch 1,( 3 dc, ch 1 in each side space), 3dc, ch 2, 3dc, ch1 (corner made) continue around and join, sl st to corner

Rnd 5: ch 3, 2dc, ch 2, 3 dc, ch 1,( 3 dc, ch 1 in each side space), 3dc, ch 2, 3dc, ch1 (corner made) continue around and join

Join: in 4 rows of six, you can join in any manner that you like but I usually do it by holding right sides together and sc in back loops of stitches

Border:

V stitch: dc, ch 1, dc

Rnd 1: With blue, join with sl st in any corner ch3, 2 dc, ch 2, 3dc, ch1, 3dc ch 1 in every space along side, in corner space 3dc, ch2, 3dc, ch1 (corner made) continue around in this manner

Rnd 2: With yellow, join in any corner, ch 4, (dc, ch1) 3 times, * in center stitch of next 3dc group V stitch, ch1 to next corner. In corner, V stitch, ch 1, V stitch, ch1 continue around in this manner join to 3rd ch of beginning ch 4.

Rnd 3: With blue, Join to any corner, ch 3, dc, ch2, 2 dc, ch1, in each V stitch along side 3 dc, ch1 to corner, in corner 2 dc, ch 2, 2 dc continue around in this manner.

Love the colors!

I really love how this one came out. The picture doesn't show just how bright it is but my only camera is on my cell and this is the best I can do. I used Simply soft yarn, the embroidery print yarn as well as grape and blue mist.

Preemie Blankets

I recently received a pattern book for dishcloths. Not really being one for making my own dishcloths I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Then it hit me, the sizes for most of them are 12" or 13" square and since preemie blankets can be as small as 12" square why not? So using Simply Soft yarn instead of the cotton and a larger hook size than called for I made these two blankets. Not all dishcloth patterns will make nice blankets but some will so try it out!

Do You Freecycle??

I just had to show you the awesome fabric I got from a fellow freecycler today. She is also a quilter and all the fabric is really nice quilt quality. To make it even better a lot of it was kid and kid friendly prints and colors. Perfect for making quilts for Project Linus and other projects!

To check for a freecycle group near you click here.

Just Rambling 3/1/2008

It has been almost 2 weeks since I've been home. I actually have three days off and I'm planning on spending time with my family. Earlier today I took my youngest (he's 20) to the zoo! We had such a good time. Tomorrow I'm driving out to see my middle child (he's 22) where he goes to college. In between all that I still have some quilts to tie and pictures to take of the things I've recently finished. I haven't even taken them out of the car yet but I'll post the pictures tomorrow. I have a really pretty (and bright!!) kids blanket done.

Since I have no pictures of my projects to post right now, I guess you'll just have to check out one of the cheetahs from my trip to the zoo!!

I just added a poll over on the right side bar about how much of your crafting is for charity. If you could take a minute to vote it would be great.

There is this funny little test you can take that tells you what kind of fiber you are. You can take the test here. By the way, I'm mohair!

I've been on the go all day today and I really wanted to get some sewing done. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.