It’s football homecoming season across the U.S. That means it’s also Homecoming Mum season in the south.

If you don’t know about this fun, crafty tradition, read our 10 Commandments of Homecoming Mums: 2011 Edition.

If you already know about Homecoming Mums and are looking for new ideas, check out our huge Index of Homecoming Mum Articles.

You’ll find lots more ideas to inspire you in our Craft Ideas Section and in our Holiday Craft Index.

Speaking of holidays, here are dates of a few significant ones coming up to help you plan your crafting.

• Thanksgiving Day (Canada) – October 8
• Halloween – October 31
• Veterans Day – November 11
• Thanksgiving Day (U.S.) – November 22
• Hanukkah begins at sundown – December 8
• Christmas Day – December 25
• Boxing Day (U.K. and Canada) – December 26
• New Year’s Eve – December 31

Happy Halloween!

Eileen

• How to Make Unique Envelopes: the Hard way and the Easy Way – Making custom envelopes to coordinate with your hand made cards couldn’t be easier if you have the Crafter’s Companion Ultimate Crafting Tool. This tutorial also tells how to do it the old fashioned way.

Decoupage

New Decoupage: Transforming Your Home With Paper, Glue, and Scissors

• How to Keep Tiny Bubbles off Your Decoupage – Tiny bubbles belong in champagne, not on your decoupage!

Fabric And Yarn Crafts

• Painting Silk Using Dye Resist Techniques – Learning silk painting is easy if you start with a design pre-printed with resist.

• Free Interweave eBooks on Yarn Crafting – All you need to do is join the Interweave Community to download these great freebies on yarn crafting.

Jewelry Making

• Wubbers Looping Pliers Video Tutorial –I can't wait to get one of these Wubbers Small Wire Looping Jewelry Pliers. It comes with a longer instructional CD; but take a look at this online video for a quick preview of what these looping pliers can do.

Clay Crafts

• Homemade Polymer Clay – Do you know how to make real polymer clay in your home kitchen. Check out our recipes. This is homemade clay which actually polymerizes (plasticizes) as it cures.

Halloween Parade Of Crafts

• Halloween Cupcake Stand

• Milk Jug Ghost

• Apple Shrunken Heads

• Halloween CD Ghost

• Spooky Halloween Spiders

• Artificial Pumpkin Decoration – Psst, it’s made from dryer vent tubing!

• Glow in the Dark Halloween Garland – This spooky garland is fun and easy to do with the kids.

• Beaded Pillar Candle – Just substitute a pumpkin shape for the heart.

• Pillar Candle Garland – Again, substitute pumpkin shapes for the hearts.

I would like to know where I can go to learn how to crochet.

Shawyne

Hi Shawyne,

I don’t know where you’re located, but on The Artful Crafter we have a local guides page of Craft Stores and Classes for each of the 50 U.S. states. Click on your state and see what shows up close to you.

You can also go to local yarn stores and see if they offer classes or have a listing of outside classes.

If you can’t find anyone to teach you the stitches or just so you can practice on your own, search for crochet videos on the internet.

Here’s a very comprehensive page which I found at Hass Design with all the basic stitches including:

• Extremely short videos to narrow the focus to one stitch at a time;
• The legends used in patterns; and
• Written instructions for each stitch.

Here’s a beginner’s tutorial for Crocheted Flowers and Leaves on The Artful Crafter which would be good for practicing.

You’ll also find lots of helpful tips in our Crochet and Knitting Index.