Made for you by kmkat.

When I do community knitting, I worry that the recipient may not know how to care for their hand knit item. Generally, if I am making something for a person Mongolia or Afghanistan I use regular wool; for someone in the US or Canada, superwash or acrylic. But how does the US person know that? I fret and I worry and toss and turn at night with the anxiety. What to do, what to do?

I made some care tags.

Now, most people would pop into Office Max or Target and pick up a package of these little tags, left, for $1.99. But I don't have one of those stores within 50 miles and needed the tags NOW. So I made my own.

I started with a box of these that I had on the shelf. No, I don't remember why I have these. I love office supplies; maybe I bought them just because I could.

Microsoft Word had exactly the template I needed. I wanted small tags, so it seemed that one business card-sized piece of card stock could make three tags.

I printed a test sheet on plain paper to be sure I had lined up the text correctly. Avery includes a grid sheet to use for checking the layout.
 

The card stock is micro-perforated so it breaks apart easily and neatly.
 

Next, the handy-dandy paper cutter to cut each card into three tags. Kids, have your mom or dad help you with this part.
 

 

Punch a hole in each one. If you are anal like me, put a reinforcement on the back. Try to center your hole better than I did.
 

Wait, what is she doing with the scissors?
 

Like I said, anal.
 

Really, really anal.
 

Or not.

Make a string from leftover yarn. Where ever will you find leftover yarn? I know not. You are on your own there.
 

Using a crochet hook, pull one end of the looped string through the item to be tagged. You won't be able to do this nearly as well as I did because you won't have a personalized hook from Ruth.

Neener, neener.

The finished product!

 

And somewhere in the process, you may find that you are not quite as good a knitter as you thought.

But the preemies won't care as long as their little heads are warm, and as long as the preemies are happy the mommies and daddies will be happy, too.