I love acrylic yarn, and I especially love Red Heart Super Saver — it has provided me with many years of cheap thrills.

I love the colors. I love the structural integrity. I love the carefreeness of being able to both use and wash the items I make.

I love that it is eminently affordable.

And I like that the projects themselves, while dear to me, are not so precious they can’t be used.

I also love the versatility of the yarn.

You can use all four plies as they are straight from the skein, or you can cut lengths of yarn and then split them into strands of one, two, or three plies, and then embroider with them as I have been for my 2016 North Carolina State Fair project.

I am enjoying the embroidery for three reasons:

One, it is fun.

Two, it adds a lot of personality to the pieces.

Three, it makes the process of crafting last even longer with virtually no added cost.

Yesterday, my efforts were concentrated on what I think of as my brick house crochet crazy quilt piece.

After finishing work on the roof (the door, bricks, and window had been pretty much completed, I then added a tree by making a bunch of French knots with assorted greens in my stash:

I was really happy with how it came out, but also very aware that if I were going to put that level of detail into each piece, this might end up being my 2017 or 2018 or maybe even my 2019 North Carolina State Fair project instead of my 2016 state fair project, so I decided to reduce the level of detail a bit.

And I succeeded (sort of):

Happy with my progress, I then laid out the pieces to get a sense of how they are working together:

I fully expect that embellishing my crochet with embroidery is a skill I am going to develop as it takes my already affordable Red Heart Super Saver yarn and gets me even more crafting time for my crafting dollar, and I find that to be a cheap thrill worth pursuing.