Tag: stash buster

Posted in knitting

Cast-on Monday: World Traveler Socks

Posted on by Laura Kate

Here we go a-stashbusting among the leaves so red. Fall is here in all its glorious splendor. I am working my stash again – this time to eke out a new pair of socks for Bill. He is down to one pair of LauraKate knit socks, the poor man.

This time I have three (3!) skeins from the stash. I am working from a Kate Davies pattern called Mary Delany.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mary-delany

This project’s yarns originate from three different continents.

My North American selection is a multi-hued beauty purchased at the farmer’s market in North Madison three years ago. Two skeins were acquired from a British native who was rearing sheep in Wisconsin, spinning and dyeing the wool. In 2020 I worked one skein into a hat called Rose Window.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rose-window-2

I honestly do not know anything else about this yarn, except that it is a two-ply sport weight. I know that the maker eventually returned to her native land.

My South American yarn is an alpaca blend from Peru.

I was given several skeins by friend Kathy who is allergic to wool. Its composition is alpaca, wool and acrylic. This may be my third project using this yarn. I do hope to high heaven that I can finally use it up.

And from Europe comes the remains of a skein by West Yorkshire Spinners.

I purchased this in Madison also and made Bill a pair of socks last year. He absolutely loves them. There is enough left of the skein to form the toes and ribs of this pair.

This sock is constructed from the toe up. I am using the 2-needle system, superior to working with four straight needles in avoiding dropped stitches.

I found that the stranded pattern used in the Delaney socks was too feminine looking for Bill’s taste. Instead, I chose to use Diamond Link and Dot from the 750 stitches ultimate knit bible – my well-thumbed reference book for stitch patterns.

I marked out the chart onto big graph paper to make it easier to use. This will become important when I’m travel knitting, something I see in my near future.

Posted in knitting

Cast-on Monday: Back to my Stash

Posted on by Laura Kate

At one point, I was interested in working with yarn that has a very long color transition. One summer, when Knitpicks has its yarn on sale, I picked up this skein of Stroll. The colorway is called Beach House – hard to resist! But when I started to knit it, I noticed that it was very thin and quite light. I put it back in the yarn closet while I had a good think about what it could become.

Flash forward to this year and the Summer of the Stash Bust. Way in the back of the fingering weight yarn cubbyhole, I came across the skein on the left. It is 100% alpaca lace weight in a warm white color. It is languishing, because I found it impossible to work with yarns that light. As I made my loops, they had the predilection to float right off of my needles. I grabbed this featherweight and decided to knit the alpaca and the Beach House Stroll held together as one strand.

Finding a garment that I can make using only the 450 yards of fingering weight is tricky. It should become a shawl, but I have way too many of those. So I came up with a pattern for a tiny, short-sleeved lace cardigan by Susanne Sommer.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/arrowhead-lace-cardigan-3

Here is my swatch and my cast-on. The pattern is worked top down.

Based on the swatch, I am thinking that I will have to add a few additional repeats of the lace to get the cardigan to fit. SO, a game of yarn chicken is afoot. (sigh.)

Posted in knitting

Orphan Skeins: A Plan

Posted on by Laura Kate

This year I am determined to shrink down my stash of yarn. While my stash isn’t as large as those of many of my peers (you know who you are!) there are far too many orphan skeins to suit me. So, I came up with a system.

I start with one orphan skein. Next, I pull any partial skeins with the same label. These yarns generally were used together in a previous project. The next step is to grab partial skeins that are the same fiber and weight (fingering, dk, worsted, etc.) and compatible colors. Once I am happy that the yarns can be combined, they get tossed into a project bag. As of today, I have four bags.

To find a suitable pattern, I start by adding up the total yardage in each bag (a digital scale helps with this step.) This number will tell me what kind of garment or accessory is possible. For example, a pair of socks requires about 400 yards, a shawl around 800 and a sweater 1200 or more.

Now the tricky part: finding a pattern. I am a big fan of Ravelry’s advanced search tool. Using the tool, I can build a search using the parameters of the yarns in the project bag. One additional parameter I choose is number of colors. I search for a project with two or more colors. No matter how many different colors of yarn I have, I can always alter the pattern to accommodate more colors.

As of today, I have four stash-busting projects, bagged up and in the queue.

A hood for Laura Lu
A shawl for gifting to someone
A scarf knit in garter ridge striped triangles.
A light-weight shrug in cotton yarn. (I’m always cold during the summer
in air-conditioned rooms.)

What’s in your yarn stash, and what can you make of it? I challenge you to come up with something unexpected.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023: Start with a Found Object

Posted on by Laura Kate

Last May I was engaged in the task of clearing out my mother’s sewing room. It was a sad but wondrous one. Almost forty years of accumulated objects, tools, machines and materials were stashed in every closet and corner of a tiny room. These included dozens of unfinished objects which were hidden in other rooms. In one closet I found draped over a hanger, rows of scrappy blocks – about sixty of them. She must have worked on this quilt over a period of years. It seemed very close to completion, so I brought it home with the idea of finishing it.

As I spread out all of the rows and loose blocks, I noticed that many blocks were not squared up. Some blocks were bigger than others. Some rows looked fine, others much shorter. (??.) Stymied by this discovery, I put the quilt away.

Now it is January and time for another Stay at Home Round Robin project. Led by Quilting Gail, this game is played by starting with a block, and then adding rows to it as clues (suggestions) are revealed weekly. I decided to get the scrappy blocks out and do something with them.

I disassembled some rows and organized the blocks by size and value. After a bit of pondering, I concluded that supporting fabrics for this quilt needed to be neutral solids. Purchasing a range of grays, I added a bright yellow batik print from my stash.

My plan is to create a value gradation starting from the center and working outward. The bright yellow will serve as a unifying sparkle for the design. Getting started, I chose four blocks that contained mostly pale colors.

To unify these four, I removed one corner from each, sewed on a triangle of yellow and assembled the blocks into a square.

My finished block will measure 15 inches. It is positioned on point to emphasize the many triangles that seem to catch the eye.

Now let’s hope the SAHHR team doesn’t throw me any CURVES!

To learn more about Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 and to play along, here is your link.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/102293878/posts/4496810917

Posted in sewing

F.O. Friday – Sewing

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week I got all ambitious to make some pants for L.L. I haven’t sewn clothes in years and years. But I wanted to respond to my daughter’s righteous indignation on the options provided by the clothing industry for little girls shorts. She complained that every pair she found were tight and very short – effectively sexualizing toddler girls. “Boy and girl shapes at this age all identical, yet the boy shorts are loose, comfortable and several inches longer than the girls.

She ended up purchasing boy shorts for her daughter.

So I wanted to make a fun, colorful garment that I knew LL would enjoy wearing.

As a maker, I also had the goal of using materials that I have on hand.

In the end, I did purchase a pattern, since I don’t have knowledge or skill in pattern-making.

I chose this one, because. along with the pants, it provided patterns for tops and dresses and sizes up to 4 – leaving the door open for me to make additional items of clothing in the near future.

Here’s the crazy fabric I chose.

It is a sturdy 100% cotton, leftover from a valance I made for my laundry room window. How about those zig-zags!

To challenge myself, I decided to match the zig-zag lines in the hems.

Here they are, all finished this morning.

Construction details I added were faced hems and a cotton jersey casing for the elastic at the waist.

I was happy that the fabric includes some of Lu’s favorite colors: blue, pink and green. I’ll bet that she already has several T-shirts to match.