2. Charity Hats

Because who can resist a picture of yarn?

This is what I see when I’m sitting at my desk. Which is actually somewhat rare – I’m usually in the living room watching the small people. My sweet husband said to me one day that I was doing really well using all of my yarn – because he thought it was all on the wall. Which is…. not exactly the case. 🙂 Anyway, a lot of what is up there is odds and ends – most of the whole skeins are in boxes or under the desk on a shelf. I’m going to try to use a significant portion of the acrylic this year – most of it was given to me, so I’m not super attached to it. It just keeps coming in.

My plan is to make hats and scarves and headbands to donate to a homeless shelter or some other charity. Not sure who they’ll go to yet, so if you have suggestions, please let me know! I don’t want to make the same pattern over and over because I get bored – and even the people at the shelter deserve a cute hat, right? I have a whole bunch of different patterns lined up in my Ravelry favorites to try out and decide which ones I like the most. I finished the first one today: it’s the Welted Beanie pattern by Theresa Calter. It was fast and simple, and what I like most about it is that it looks great both on me and on my husband! I think that makes it a good hat to donate – anyone could wear it.

8. Wool Dryer Balls

Suddenly I find myself doing crazy things like making dryer balls. How did I get here?

I had wool yarn that a neighbor gave to me from when she helped clean out someone’s garage – so my total cost was pretty much nothing. I did wash the yarn before I wound it, because it smelled like garage and there was some stuff stuck in it. But I figure even with the extra work to wash the yarn, they

Here are the balls of yarn before they were felted. Don’t look too much different, really.

are free. Even if they turn out to not help at all I won’t be heartbroken. Took four skeins to make eight balls.

The felting was interesting, since I’ve never done it before; but luckily I wore a hole in my nylons on Sunday, so I had them to knot the balls in. It’s all working out well so far, don’t you think? Mondays are laundry day AND husband had the day off, so I did – let’s see – five loads of laundry? And the dryer balls got in on either three or four of those. Plenty to felt the yarn together. Wahoo!