Frosty the Snowman

Awhile ago, I was looking here at online patterns for things made out of plarn. (If you aren't familiar with it, plarn is plastic bag yarn.) I found a pattern for a snowman made out of plarn. You can find the pattern here. He was so cute, I just had to make him! :-) So I started making some plarn. I used only Wal-mart bags, and other blue and white bags, so the snowman would be white with blue speckles. Once I finished the snowman, I made his scarf. In the pattern, the scarf was supposed to be knitted, but since the snowman is a fair project, and I was entering him in crocheting, I figured I better not make a knitted scarf. So I made up a pattern for a a little scarf. Then I made the hat. Since I could not figure out the pattern for the hat, and the hat wasn't turning out right, I made up my own pattern for a hat. I have made lots of baby hats, and his head wasn't much smaller than a newborn baby's, it wasn't hard to make up a pattern for the hat. Then I added a pom pom to the top of the hat. I named him Frosty. :-) He took a long time to make, but he is worth it because he is so cute. I haven't found any googly eyes yet, (I'm surprised my sister doesn't have any) and I haven't figured what I am going to do for the carrot nose, so he doesn't have a face yet. But, I'll post pictures of him with a face when I finish his face. :-) I probably used about 100 bags, and he's stuffed with the handles and the bottom of the bags (and all the pieces that broke).

Frosty the Snowman

Frosty without his hat and scarf

Block Party Report #5 - Final Tallies

Sorry it took me so long to get this posted. We got all of the blankets for the Block Party shipped to Ukraine awhile ago, and this post is the final tallies of things we collected.

• Blankets - 8
• Scarves (made from left over squares) - 2
• Pairs of Slippers - 23
• Pairs of baby booties - 2
• Baby Sweaters - 4
• Crochet baby hats - 34
• Knit baby hats - 17
• Flannel Baby Blankets - 21
  

Total Number of Items made for Ukraine - 111!!!! And if you count all the squares instead of the blankets, and the individual slippers instead of the pairs you get 429 things made for Ukraine!!!!! That is amazing!!! But even though I put this all together, and organized it (with lots of help!) I do not deserve any of the praise. God does!!!! I pray that through this many people in Ukraine who are hurting will be blessed. THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED MAKE THIS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!! Thank you for helping me set goals, and over achieve them!

One person who set goals is my Aunt Lori. You can see her squares here. She told me that every night she would set a goal of how many she was going to get done that night. She would say "I'm going to get 5 squares tonight!" And then the next thing she knew it was 1 or 2 am in the morning! (You can tell her mom doesn't live with her to tell her when to go to bed like my mom does!) Thank you so much Aunt Lori for all your time and squares! Thank you so much everyone who donated all your time and yarn to make this possible. I can't even estimate how many hours everyone put in all together, so thank you so much!

I have already received squares for next years Block Party. Thank you so much Geri and Valerie for those. I'll post picture of those when it gets closer to next years Block Party. We are planning on doing it at the end of February next year. Below are pictures of things we collected that I haven't posted pictures of yet.

All the slippers and baby booties

These hats were made by my friend Rachel with "her" pattern for baby hats. Thank you Rachel for these hats!!

"Little" Rachel (my little sister) ing one of the hats!

Here are the 21 flannel receiving blankets that my mom and I made

Here are the four different fabrics we made them out of.

Here are some baby hats that I made. Some have pom poms, and some don't because I really didn't feel like making a ton of pom poms. (That's why I need that pom pom maker!) :-)

Baseballs

Baseball Season has started! So I thought I would share an interesting thing I learned about baseballs. There is actually yarn in a baseball!! Thay are made with yarn in them - wool and a little bit of cotton. The picture below shows what the inside of a modern baseball looks like. I told my cousin this (he's crazy about baseball) and he's like "Yeah, I know." :-)

Garage Sale Finds!

I love garage sales! You can find the best deals at them! Like the deal I found yesterday! I found two giant bags of thread for only $2 each! Thats a really good deal if you compare it to the price of thread in the store. The lady at the sale said its great that I crochet, and that she would be using that thread to crochet, but its to hard on her eyes, so she is glad that I can put it to use. But, now that I have all this thread, I have to take time to get used to using thread and a tiny hook, and use it all up! :-)

Here is one of the bags of thread.

Here is the the other bag - can you tell that I had a very hard time getting the thread to stay stacked for the picture? :-) (Oh, and ignore the messy background :-) - they are my sisters Polly Pockets)

$2.00!!!! :-)

The two bags of thread

I got theses three magizines at garage sale about a year ago. I think they were 10 cents each, and they have alot of great patterns in them. I think one is from 1991, and one is 1993, and one is from 1987.

They do have some vintage (my mom says the 80's isn't vintage) patterns like the two above.

Bu there are also some really good patterns like this bag and the horse below

If you are a crocheter or knitter like I am, garage sales and thrift shops are great places to look for supplies and great deals!! Most of my crochet hooks are from the thrift store, and I have also gotten a lot of great yarn there, so I would recommend looking there and at garage sales for things instead of spending almost 3 times as much money if you were buying them at a craft store.