One of my favourite things to play with is yarn scraps. When Carla issued a scrap yarn challenge to use up leftover yarns from last year’s KNITmuch posts, I jumped at it!
The photo above is the “scrap heap” that arrived in the mail (I added two leftover balls of Rozetti Cotton Gold in blue and silver that I had reviewed in November):
A pair of dice, a circular needle and some time are all that are needed to make this cowl!
From this lovely mess I pulled the Bamboo Bloom, Classic Shades Metallic, the dark taupe tweed, and the Cotton Gold.
The first day’s post talked in detail about each of the yarns in the package.
On day two, we took the two skeins of Bamboo Bloom, a pair of dice, and a circular needle and created the Cowl by Chance. This fun knitting method can be applied to any yarn where random knit and purl stitches will work to the yarn’s advantage.
On Wednesday, we took the Classic Shades Metallic and a free pattern from the Universal Yarn website and created the Get to the Point cowl. I squeaked this one out of a single ball of yarn with about two yards to spare! I totally loved the way this long-span variegated yarn forms soft rings of colour around the wearer’s neck! The challenge in this post was to adjust a pattern to yarn of a different weight. Yarn substitution is something a lot of knitters want to do, but many are too shy to try. I showed how to do it, and I mocked up my pattern with my adjustments. I also did a loose cast on that beginning knitters might want to check out.
The Get to the Point cowl, a free pattern from Universal Yarn.
The first foot or so of the Flint Ridge Scarf
Our third project of the week was another free pattern from the Universal yarn site, the Flint Ridge Scarf. This time, I followed the pattern as written, but I only had half of the yarn the pattern required. In this post, I gave two tips to improve the look of a project – one about choosing the right cast on to fine-tune your edge, and another about using short rows to prevent garter stitch edgings from curling.
The last post of the week surprised me. When I had reviewed Rozetti Cotton Gold in November, I took a pattern called Pheilraupe and made this rather stunning shawl.
Pheilraupe, made from Rozetti Cotton Gold yarn
I had about 20 grams left of the blue and a whopping 15 grams (1/2 oz) of the silver left from the shawl. I took another ball of scrap yarn, about 95 grams of black acrylic yarn I had leftover from an afghan project, grabbed my needles, and created these:
These evening bags (top two) do NOT look as though they were made from scrap yarn!
The educational component of this post was the finishing — each bag was lined, outfitted with a shoulder cord, and anchored with a magnetic clasp.
This week of blogging was both challenging and FUN! I hope you take a cruise through the KNITmuch site and see the details of these projects!
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