Its summer and its hot and maybe steamy and its hard to really get into a sizable project. We need little stuff to work on. Little, pretty, and perhaps utterly useless stuff.

Every try decorating cards, or card stock with a crochet edge? Its dead simple. I have plenty of cards that I’ve kept because I’m a sentimental squish. They sit in a box where no one can see them. Today I’m decorating one and hanging it up. Its the perfect kind of project for a hot summer day.

If you suffer from sentimental squishiness as well then you probably have a whole stack of cards in a box too. You’re keeping them because they are pretty, or they mark a very special occasion, or they are from someone who has passed on. Or maybe you’ve just keep every single card everyone has ever given you. S’ok.

Whatever your reasons for keeping them, you’ve probably told yourself that someday you’ll get them organized. Someday you’ll get them into an album. Guess what? You’re lying to yourself. Making up albums is a HUGE endeavor and you’ll never do it. But you might take one out, punch holes in it, and crochet frame. That’s not huge. That takes maybe 20 minutes. And it lets you play with yarn.

There are tutorials for adding crochet edges to paper stock all over the internet. One Sheepish Girl has a particularly nice one. But the technique is very easy and I’m sure you can do it all on your own. All you need to do grab a card, punch some holes in it, and start crocheting.

I punched holes about one inch apart. Then I joined yarn in a corner hole with a slip stitch. Between the punched holes I chained 4 stitches. In each hole I put a single crochet. If you’ve ever added an edge to a flannel baby blanket, yes, its exactly like that.

After I worked my way around the card, I did a second, and final round. At this point you can improvise and work any pattern you like. I did this:

• in each ch 4 space, 2 sc, ch 3, sc
• work a sc in the sc from previous round

Those ch 3 make little picots. I like  picots. They are so cute.

After finished the picot round, I cut yarn and wove in ends. Then I attached a long chain on the top edge and blam! I can hang it up like its a framed picture. No more sitting around in a box for that card. Now its out where I can see it and have sentimental and squishy thoughts about it.

Will I do all the other cards I have sitting in that box? Probably not. But I may get to a few more. Its easy and a nice way to use up yarn ends. I tell you this for certain: Its 2,567% more likely that I will crochet edges on cards than I will go and get an album put together.