Group Granny Stripe Baby Afghan

Last night was our Mission Crafts Ministry meeting at church - or Knitting With The Church Ladies as I usually call it. LOVE these ladies so much! We craft and laugh and pray - does it get any better than that???

One of the ladies is expecting her first grandbaby, so we wanted to give her a baby afghan from all of us. I found the Granny Stripe afghan pattern on the Attic24 Blog and that was perfect for our needs!

A picture of the yarn pallette we chose - Vanna's Choice Baby using colors that I think of as a bit more modern. Love how they look all jumbled in the cart ready to go. :)



The Beginning of the afghan! I did the two rows of each color, then met one of the gals for dinner and the hand off so that she could do her rows. It is AMAZING how fast this pattern goes - lightning fast crochet!

Here's the blanket as of our meeting last night! I am head over heels in love with the way it's coming out, although I see all of those ends that will have to be woven in and it almost gives me palpitations. ;) Happily, we do actually have a gal that says she enjoys the weaving and she is FAST at it!

Last night as we all did the ooh and ahh over this blanket we made a decision that after giving this to Doris we will start another and always have one in process. We'll probably leave it at the church and then anybody can work on it. This way when our church gets a call from somebody that needs a blanket we will be ready.

A Coke and A Smile Gift

Last night was Mission Crafts Ministry night at church and since it was our last meeting before Christmas I wanted to do a little something to make it a bit more special.

 

I had gotten these little Coke tins at Walmart after Christmas last year at a super low price.  I didn’t want to fill them with standard cookies or candy, so Keith and I put our thinking caps on to come up with something.  We decided that along with your Coke you would want something salty, so I cooked up a batch of Chex Mix.

 

I lined the inside of the tin with some plastic wrap, filled it with Chex Mix, then folded the plastic wrap over the top to seal it.

In keeping with the Coke color theme I used red gift bags with white tissue paper.  Each gift had a Coke tin with Chex Mix and a little bottle of Coke with the red curly ribbon.  Very well received and it was a fun gift to make!

 

I also brought a tray of these Peppermint Brownies and sighs of delight were heard all around.  This will now be my holiday go-to brownie.

 

** Linking to Take-A-Look Tuesday, Get Your Craft On, Tip Me Tuesday

Mission Crafts Ministry–Dishcloths

Last night the Mission Crafts Ministry met up at the church and of course we had a wonderful time.  The more I meet with these ladies the more I fall in love with them.  Their giving hearts and ready laughter can life a spirit better than anything.

Our project for Thanksgiving and Christmas is to knit dishcloths to include in our food baskets that will be distributed.  The “guidelines” were to either knit or crochet any pattern, any color and any size – we like to stay loose with rules. 

I’m happy to say that we’ve met the Thanksgiving number goal and are heading towards Christmas now!  It was so much fun to look through the cloths that were brought last night and see all the different colors and textures.  We have a card maker that is going to make a gift card to go along with each dishcloth as well.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures at all of the pile of dishcloths last night, but will try to remember to do so at Christmas.

We also started knitting Tribbles last night and that has turned out to be fun!  One small ball of Sugar n Cream yarn will make a Grandmother’s Favorite dishcloth and a Tribble, thus making us able to really utilize all the yarn we have.

 

Speaking of yarn, if anybody is thinking about starting a similar ministry at their church I would encourage you to let the congregation, and your family, know that you will be needing yarn and needles.  We put the call out to the congregation and people are cleaning out closets and bringing yarn to us.  And the basket above came from my mother-in-law – she bought it and the package of needles at an estate sale.  The yarn is two layers deep and I’ll bet there’s 50 or so knitting needles and crochet hooks in the package.  What a great blessing to have supplies available to us!