Welcome to the December Sustainable Craft Challenge Blog Hop. This month's theme is Last Minute Gifts, and I like making handmade crochet accessories for friends and family instead of buying fast fashion pieces. I hope they love and enjoy the handmade gifts and keep them for a looooooooong time. I like to make items that are so unique, so they'll never go out of style. 😁 I knew the perfect pattern to create a really quick Christmas themed scarf. The Christmas Holly Leaf Scarf (pattern by Celtic Knot Crochet) was the first project that popped into my head, and I knew it would also be a great project to use up some of the green yarn in my stash.  

 

 

As I mentioned before, I have a large stash of yarn. I've been crocheting for over 20 years, but I started buying more and more yarn once I opened my Etsy shop. And when I see pretty yarn all over Instagram and Facebook and in my email and all the ads that pop up on my phone and magazines in the mail, I get the urge to buy all the pretty yarn whether I have a project in mind or not. And when I go to the craft store, and they're having an awesome sale, or they have a great coupon on their app, I usually buy more yarn because who passes up a good sale!? So I have ended up with all this yarn, and when I look at some of it, I think to myself, "Why the heck did I buy that?!" It's very common for crafters to end up with big stashes of supplies whether it's yarn, fabric, buttons, stickers, paints, scrapbook paper, etc.  I see crafters posting about destashing all the time. Now, I have reached a point where, I'd like to use up this stash of yarn and not buy anymore. 

So one great way to use up a yarn stash is by crocheting for charities, and that's what I'm doing. I previously used up a lot of my blue yarn by crocheting blue hats for the Hat Not Hate anti-bullying campaign. And now, I'm participating in Operation Gratitude's Clear Your Stash Challenge.  For this charity challenge, knitters, crocheters, and loomers are making hats and scarves using any color yarn from their stash, and these handmade hats and scarves will be given to deployed troops and veterans during the holiday season. As an Army brat and Navy wife, I'm all for making things for the troops. AND....  Last deployment, my sailor husband came home with a crochet hat that I did NOT recognize. 😕 And when I asked him about it, he said it was donated by Operation Gratitude. He said some guys got scarves too, but they didn't have enough for everyone, so he was only able to get a hat.  (I always make hats for my husband to wear during deployments, but it didn't occur to me to make him a scarf.😆) So now, I'm making scarves for Operation Gratitude. 😊 And the first three scarves I crocheted were made with monochrome yarn.