I made another hitchiker scarf. The first one I had gifted. I quite liked making it. It's fairy mindless, it's garter stitch, and it shows of wildly handpainted yarns quite nicely.
Like this skein of Wollmeise that I got in a swap.
The color was "Aspen Tree". I loved it because it was COLORFUL, but couldn't really think of too much to do with it as I felt it was a bit busy. Except...
It's glorious, this second hitchhiker scarf. Wollmeise is sturdy stuff, so wearing this on a trail was no thing at all. Plus, when I went to the pub at night, I had some class little accessory to brighten things up.
I used up the entire skein, and it is plenty long. It can drape, it can wrap, it can just be an awesome scarf-shawl and keep me warm, I can flip the end around and make a bandanna. The asymmetry is fun to play with and I've worn this quite a lot already. It's too bad- I love knitting lacy fancy shawls, but they never get any use as I feel they are too delicate or fussy to actually wear. The big boring plain knits I wear all the time.
Also....there's a fair bit of navy blue in there, which means I can wear this with pretty much anything in my wardrobe.
Like so many knitters, I had accumulated a really large amount of scraps since I've started knitting. Hopefully, you end a project and still have a bit left and don't have to put a funky contrasting stripe in. Ahem. What to do, with all those odd balls and leftovers? A bit of color-work here and there fits the bill nicely, but it still won't put a dent in my scrappy stash.
Since moving abroad and starting fresh three years ago, I managed to knit enough to once again get an overflowing bin of leftover odds and ends. Sigh. I resolved to do something with them instead of cramming yet another partial skein into the bin. Searching the vast crafty pages of the internet, I ruled out loads of ideas before starting to drift towards blankets. I have never made one of those before! My fully-furnished rental flat had a decor scheme of white and beige and zzzzzz I'm sick of that.
Finally:
The Babette blanket, a crochet calliphony of different sized squares, all cobbled together and tied up with a border. It is a sight to behold. All my sport, sock and robust laceweight yarn scraps...every last bit used up.
If you have received a knitted gift from me in the past few years, chances are you can possibly play a game of I-spy and find your leftovers. wow, much pink.
It's kind of a hot mess of whatever I could grab and crochet into a square. I tried to mix it up as best I could without too many similar colors grouped together, but that was really all the planning I did. I've seen other people's blankets where they actually planned out their color scheme, and it looks fantastic. However, I am not that color coordinated and I really just wanted all the stash gone.
I did have a small moment of cheating as a friend of mine brought a bag of scraps of Wollmeise to knit night and was just giving it away, so I got a much-needed boost of someone else's stash. Otherwise, I would have run out of scraps, the horror of it all!
I tried to seam it up as I went along just to save myself the mega headache of getting this all together. This didn't work really well: after washing and hanging to dry, the weight of it all unravled many, many seams of the slippery superwash wool. I spend a whole afternoon piecing it all back together again.
It really was so simple, and not so huge where it didn't drive me mad. It's a good scrap-busting project, and it adds a much-needed pop of color to my world of beige.
It's throw sized, so it's nice to curl up on the couch with it with a cuppa.
Since I had never crocheted a square before, a found this tutorial quite helpful:
It took me three or four watches and then I was motoring along like a pro.
I am quite pleased with it. No awkward bin of scraps, some cheerful warmth, and self-satisfaction all in one project.
Once I had gotten all the gifties sent off in early December, something remarkable happened.
I stopped knitting.
Really! I've had no motivation or inspiration at all. It's weird, but it's cold enough out so that I think it will hit me again any day now. I mean, I have a few projects on the needles, but I'm chipping away at them so slowly that I can't tell if I'm progressing at all.
Soon.
I did finish two smallish projects though.
First up, a luxury gift. Tiny they might be, but made out of the softest cashmere.
I had two skeins of Debbie Bliss Cashmere in my stash forever. The really lovely yarns tend to stick around for a while- I'll knit with all Cascade 220 down to scraps with no complaints, but I have a really hard time deciding on projects with the good stuff. Since this yarn only has a miserable 49 yards in a skein, I was having a hard time choosing. The only thing to make that small yardage-wise would be a hat for a baby, and I didn't know anyone currently expecting who wouldn't throw it in the washer-dryer without blinking.
Another option? A really simple pair of fingerless gloves. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but so soft and warm I almost kept them for myself.
The pattern (and you barely need one) is from the Knitbot Essentials book. They are called "70 yard mitts", but I made mine a bit longer and used every last bit of 98 yards on mine, and the police haven't showed up at my door yet.
Another gift:
I started a Hitchhiker scarf at knit night, and soon had used up an entire skein of Online Supersock. This pattern was so simple, worked entirely in garter stitch, and everyone who saw me working on it could not believe that someone had created yarn that stripes so perfectly on its own.
It made for a perfect gift: it's a scarf, but a very unusual one, as it's asymmetrical. I might just make some more of these if I ever get around to it. You can almost take a nap and not screw it up.
Oh, and just a bit of gloating as to what I got at a Christmas swap with my fab knitting group:
A skein of Wollmeise! The lusted-after handpainted yarn from Germany. I have no idea what I'll do with something this colorful, but I'm still in the stages of petting my precious.
I think those are the tried and true methods of healing all wounds. What better way to get out of a funk then indulge in some retail therapy?
When anything becomes intensely popular, I usually do my best to avoid it. If I liked it to begin with, I have some tough decisions to make. Magnolia Bakery, Rollerderby, Shake Shack- these are all things that I liked (and still like), but the hassle of their popularity make them inaccessible to someone with limited patience for waiting in lines and being crowded.
Luck was on my side last week when I stumbled upon someone selling Wollmeise for no more than retail price. I wasn't even interested in buying any, but I figured a little ray of orange-red sunshine in my life wouldn't be terrible. This yarn is notorious for being hard to get- it sells out within minutes anytime a shop update is posted, and then it shows up on Ebay for twice the price and people will actually pay it! The dyer is quite talented- she is known for her bright, saturated colors...but come on! It's sock yarn. Paying more than retail for something that will eventually adorn your stinky peds just doesn't make much sense to me.
Anyway. I lucked out and got a skein. The color is "Pillars of Fire". It makes me happy on a dreary rainy day.
There! That's out of my system. Back to my draconian yarn diet and stash knit-down. I have a FO that's been done for a month but I haven't photographed, plus 3 more projects that I'm making progress on. I'm more or less back to a normal schedule now so I should be motivated to post more regularly.
