For a number of people, December is the season of giving gifts, and I count myself in that number, and while I often get a head start on the season by making November a “stash down” challenge where I crochet using only yarn from my stash, this year my focus was a more specific kind of challenge where I not only limited myself to yarn in my stash, I also had to use at least one of the myriad crochet remnants I have as the foundation for making crochet squares for Project Amigo.

It is a wonderful and completely gratifying project to work on, but it also means that I don’t have the hats and toys and shawls and such that I usually accumulate by the end of November, and now that I have finished rehabbing all but one of crochet remnants in the most recent array I had assembled:

It is time for me to switch gears.

So while I set aside this one crochet cookie so that I could properly document the “new to me” squaring off technique I used to transform seven crochet cookie remnants:

I decided it was time to plow forward on some of the gifts I wanted to give.

First up on my to-do list is a set of pot holders inspired by the crochet cookies remnants I had been working on.

Because these will be felted, I used a worsted weight merino wool and a 6.5 mm (or K) hook. I knew exactly where to put the increases for the first eight rounds and after some trial and error, I finally got something acceptable for the next six round:

With the two pot holders crocheted, the most challenging thing I have left to do is find some bits of feltable wool so that I can decorate the surface of these two crochet cookie pot holders before I felt them, and then I will continue moving forward through December, one project and one stitch at a time.