CAL, Star, & Bucket

On May 1st I participated in a CAL (crochet along) on ravelry.  My friend Claudia designed the potholder pattern for the CAL, and today she wrote a blog post on it.  As of today there are 50 people who made a total of 100 of these potholders.  I love all the different color combinations.  You should go check out her blog post here.  The 6 floral potholders above are the ones that I made.  The first two were for a swap, but it seems that my partner has flaked out on me (so I get to keep them).  The 3rd one I gave to my mom, the 4th one went to my grandma, and the 5th one was given to my mother-in-law.  The last one was for me.  Thank you Claudia for hosting such a wonderful and successful CAL.

'Tis the season to start my patriotic crafting.  There are at least 3 patriotic holidays from May - September, which means that red, white, and blue items can decorate my house all summer long.  I've been really into making cotton items for my kitchen this month, so to kick off one of my favorite holidays, Memorial Day, I made this star dishcloth/washcloth.  I don't plan on using it as a dishcloth though.  I plan on using it as a hot pad.  The beginning of the pattern confused me a little, but after that it was very easy.  A bonus to the pattern is that it would be easy to make a large star afghan using it.  

One sad thing about this week is that Tuesday was the last drop-in craft day at the library until next school year.  They gave each child a bucket and shovel to decorate with foam stickers.  The funny thing about the foam shapes is that 99% of them were not stickers and they did not provide any glue.  So I pulled out the center of all the Os, As, Rs, and other letters with holes in them so that my son could put the shapes on his bucket (all the letters were foam stickers).