Category Archives: Interweave

Uses for Scrap Yarn

You can use up all your scrap yarn by crocheting coloful granny squares with it. Get an easy, free basic granny square pattern here!

You can use up all your scrap yarn by crocheting coloful granny squares with it. Get an easy, free basic granny square pattern here!

A few days ago, a friend asked if he could have some of my yarn and embroidery floss. He doesn’t crochet, knit, sew or cross stitch, so I was puzzled by the request.


“What are you going to do with the yarn?” I asked him.

He said, “I’m going to use it to tie flies for fly fishing.”

Turns out that he didn’t need big pieces; he was happy to have a bunch of little pieces of my scrap yarn.

I was more than happy to give the scraps to him. I rarely throw any pieces of yarn away, not even the pieces that are too small to do anything with…so they tend to accumulate in my stash. Yay! I made a fisherman happy, and decluttered a bit at the same time.

More Ways to Use Up Scrap Yarn:

Use up your scrap yarn by making cute little loom-crafted flowers! Haafner Linssen's book, Crochet Loom Blooms, shows you how to do this. Photo courtesy of interweave.

Use up your scrap yarn by making cute little loom-crafted flowers! Haafner Linssen’s book, Crochet Loom Blooms, shows you how to do this. Photo courtesy of Interweave.

Halloween Crochet Patterns: Halloween is the Ideal Holiday for Beastly Crochet

Brenda K.B. Anderson’s pattern book, Beastly Crochet, wasn’t specifically intended to be a book of Halloween crochet patterns. However, if you celebrate Halloween, October is a great time for crocheting the patterns in the book. That’s because this pattern collection is all Halloween friendly.

Beastly Crochet Book by Brenda K.B. Anderson, Published by Interweave

Beastly Crochet Book by Brenda K.B. Anderson, Published by Interweave

For example, let’s take the critters on the Beastly Crochet book cover (pictured.) If you look closely at their mouths, you’ll see these little monsters are stuffed with candy. They’re the perfect storage units for all the Halloween candy your little trick-or-treaters or party-goers might collect on Halloween night.


Cute, aren’t they?


You can crochet and felt them using the pattern and instructions given in this book.

If you want to make Halloween costumes for yourself or a child you know, this book has patterns you could use. There’s a super cute pattern for Sasquatch Slippers and Mittens, which I think might also work as bear claws. So you could dress up as a sasquatch or a bear if you make these. There’s also a vampire hat which could be the basis for an interesting Halloween costume.


The sweet skull hairpins are totally Halloween friendly. If those aren’t quite what you had in mind, you can check out bunches more knit and crochet skull patterns here at this website. The link takes you to a list that’s mostly free patterns aside from the ones included in this book and a couple of others that are worth paying for (in my opinion). Beastly Crochet also includes a sugar skull bag pattern, which I think is a little creepy — but I guess that’s the idea, right?


One of the fantastic things about this book is that the patterns are great for Halloween, but you can also use them at other times too. That translates to a great value for the time and money you spend on both the book and the projects. A big thumbs up to that!

Overall I really enjoyed this book, which tells you a lot since I am not someone who ordinarily enjoys crocheting skulls or creepy projects.

If you want more details about the book and its contents, I invite you to click here for my detailed book review.

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