What Do You Do With Your Scrap Yarn?

I've recently finished a blanket I've been working on and I'm so glad it's finally complete. Crocheted, joined up and ends sewn in. It's been the never ending project for 2 years! But now it's done and I am cosily snuggled underneath it as we speak. I haven't got any photos yet but I will take some for a Ta-Da post soon.

The thing is, there is a lot of yarn left over from this project which makes my acrylic stash overflow a bit. I decided to pull out all of my acrylic double knit scraps to take stock of what I have.

There's enough to make another lap blanket here

These are the scraps from three projects. two crochet blankets and one woven scarf. Yummy colours and many possibilities 😍

I took advantage of all this spare yarn to try a little pattern I've been meaning to try for aaaages. It is a free tutorial on My Giant Strawberry which is a hugely inspirational blog written by Anne who is a wonderful artist. Anne has been showcasing artists and their sketchbooks recently which has been really interesting. I love looking through other artists sketchbooks, don't you?

This rose weighs 49g so I'm thinking it would take a lot of those to use up all this yarn 😉

One idea I have to use it all up is to make a blanket of flowers. Lots of flowers in a jumble of colours all attached by the petals (as opposed to crocheting them into square blocks). It would look like you were sleeping under a flowerbed, which is a fun thought. 😊 Another idea is to learn to free form crochet and start at one end and free form shapes all the way to the other end. Have you ever tried free form crochet? If you have I'd love some advice. If you haven't come across it before, type it into google and look at the images. It's like painting with yarn! This appeals to me as when I was younger I painted everyday, and with the left over paint on my palette I would paint a page in my sketchbook, starting in one corner and adding paint whenever I had some left to use. I like the idea of doing that with yarn. It looks so fun, but it would be a big learning curve. Then there's the simplicity of stripes. Simple is tempting.

In the mean time, I'm thinking my rose needs a hat to live on so first I must make a hat.

I'd like to know, what do you do with all of your scrap yarn? Is there a favourite scrap busting pattern you always use, or do you save it all that *perfect* project that will come along?

*B*

Little Painted Teapot

Well, my goal to write a blog post every week isn't turning out very well.

Things are quite slow here at the moment. I have lots of projects in the pipeline but little energy to do them. I do have something to show you today though. A few weeks ago a group of us ladies visited a pottery painting studio and had a go at decorating some ceramics. It was quite fun to sit and natter and do a bit of painting.

There were quite a few different ceramic pieces to choose from. Mugs and cups of different sizes, plates and bowls, decorations and ornaments. I wanted to make something practical that I could use. I didn't fancy making something to sit on a shelf and gather dust, so I chose to paint a teapot.

I love the shape of this teapot.

My plan, before seeing this, was to paint a mug in a grid with wildflowers filling each grid. That idea flew out the window when I found the teapot. 😊

As you can see, I stuck with the wildflowers. At least, I hope you can see I stuck with the wildflowers. It's a bit abstract. The purple thingies are lavender and the blue is cornflower. I don't know if you can see, but if you look carefully, there are little yellow dots too. They were going to be flowers but I decided to leave them floating. I made a mistake when painting the centre flowers. There were supposed to be 3 lavender heads, but I ran out of space. Too much nattering I think.

I've just realised while I'm typing this, that the lavender-cornflower-yellow flower combo mirrors a little patch in my mum's garden. It's a little spot I love to investigate in the summer. Each of the plants is visited by a different type of bee which are fascinating to watch. Bee-watching along with the heady scent of lavender makes for a very enjoyable and sleepy summers afternoon. Painting my mum's garden was totally Freudian though, I was thinking 'meadow' at the time.

My husband brought me some tea in bed one morning, bringing the tea in this funky teapot. (I married a sweetie) It was the first time we used it and I'm really glad I had the forethought to get up and take the tea into the living room because the pot dribbled the tea all over the tray, the coffee table (tea table?) and the floor! I'm so glad I didn't pour it in bed! So it turns out I have a lovely new teapot that is really unusable that will look pretty sitting on a shelf, gathering dust after all. Oh well. I love the colours so it will look nice on that shelf 😉

The pottery painting day was meant for the ladies and children but my husband decided he would stick around after seeing this:

This mug holds more tea than my teapot! He says he's going to put a cactus in it

Not a bad paint job, eh? He's a sweetie and a big kid!

                                                                  *B*