Of all the times to receive a book of crochet patterns designed for giving to charity groups, this was the perfect time for me to find a review copy of Hug It Out by Drew Emborsky (aka The Crochet Dude) in my mail box. Other than the fact that I am regularly making crocheted items to give to various charity groups, as it happens, right now for the month of February (2012) I am running a donation drive through the Yahoo Crochet List for the Okeechobee Healthy Start Coalition. The first project I plan to tackle from this book of 9 patterns is an adorable baby hat on pages 10-11 in the book. What I like about this particular pattern is that it uses medium weight (# 4) yarn versus thinner DK or light worsted (# 3) yarn. So it should work up pretty quickly.

All nine projects cover an array of donation opportunities: mobious cowl, chemo cap, baby comfort blanket, kennel blanket, baby hat, comfortghan, prayer shawl, comfort teddy, and drawstring bag. You can get a look at them at the Leisure Arts web site. Of course, along with the baby hat, I am very interested in the baby comfort blanket, but the drawstring bags look like a great way to use up leftover yarn and maybe have my craft club sell them as a way to earn some money for your service projects.

I have read through a number of the project instructions, and even though I tend to be “instructionally challenged” at times, these look really straight forward. In fact, all but two of the projects are at easy or beginner level. The other two are intermediate level. The book is 28 pages long, and considering you get 9 projects for the retail cost of $7.95 (that is .88 cents for each), I think this is a huge value for those us who may already have some favorite patterns we use now for our chairty giving but would like to get a little more variety going with what we make.