Raccoon Potholder

I took a break from my holiday boxes to put together a potholder from Annie's Crochet Showcase of Needlecraft Potholder Potpourri. I love this old collection of Potholders and it has provided a great deal of inspiration for Crochetville's wishlist this year. The original was made in browns, but I wanted to find grey kitchen cotton for my project. It was a bit challenging finding shades of grey, but but I was pleased to find light and darker grey available if I was willing to order online. I did find some lighter grey available locally.

The original pattern used plastic safety eyes, I decided to crochet mine as I didn't want them to be a hazard in the kitchen. I also had to rework the nose section as the designer and I clearly weren't communicating and after 2 attempts of following the pattern I decided it was time to work on something that would work for me. I'm not sure when this will be heading off to its new home as I am not quite sure if it needs something else and I am focused on getting my Easter project out the door.

Flower Power Scrubby

As I mentioned in a previous post a friend is collecting kitchen items for her donation project and I thought it would be fun to experiment with projects.

This was another free scrubby pattern I found here. If you haven't worked with plastic scrubby's before and like video tutorials Lily has a great one here. I found both patterns worked better for me when I understood the basics of setting up the foundation row. If this isn't a problem for you than by all means proceed on with your project.

Two notes with this pattern. First is a simple typing mistake that lists (2) round 3's. This is simply fixed by completing all the rounds. Second was pointed out by the author of the pattern. My scrubbies didn't quite fit the pattern she created. I tried increasing the size of my hook but at a certain point gaps appeared making the appearance look bad. I didn't want to change to dc as I felt hdc would likely last longer for the type of job being handled. So I simply followed the pattern adding an additional row with additional stitches in the row. It made it a bit more challenging when it came to joining it in that 36 stitches tends to be the standard joining to a scrubby, but I made it work and the additional leaves didn't seem to be an issue either. I liked the way it turned out for my project.

I don't use plastic scrubbies much these days as I found the free Spiral Scrubbie pattern here. This has been my go to pot scrubber and all around general cleaner for some time now. However, what I liked about the Flower Power Scrubby was I suppose a plus and a negative. On the plus size I liked that it gave me a place where you can hold it and scrub without the abrasive portion of the scrubby attacking your hand. On the down side you only can use one side of the scrubby. Once sewn in you only get to use the outward side. Once it is worn down, it is done. Then again I use my crochet goods. I'm not some of these aren't just for decorative purposes.