Using Up Yarn

Four months down, and I am still managing to make a fairly good dent in my yarn stash. I will freely admit that I have bought some yarn (and a friend of mine has bought a fair little bit of yarn on sale with the idea of me buying it from her. hehehe). But, I’ve also traded away a whole lot (I mean, a lot) and given some to Darlene over at Craftkitten, as she does a lot of charity knitting.

So, without the yarn from my friend (hey, I haven’t paid for it and it isn’t in my hands yet), I’m down 1427.1 yards. Not bad at all! (I think once I get all the yarn from here, I may actually be at 0 or worse!)

To help with my numbers, I made a couple of projects last month that used all the yarn in the skein. First up was Dicey, the socks I’ve been working on since March. The second sock actually ended up a row shorter than the first sock, but I’m pretty sure no one is going to notice. The yarn is Crystal Palace Panda Cotton that was originally their Caribbean Blue colourway, but which I over-dyed with some grey Ritt dye.

Dicey from Sock Madness 2012

The pattern was from Sock Madness 2012, a sock knitting contest on Ravelry. I was knocked out in the first round because I wasn’t able to finish the socks to the directed length since I ran out of yarn. I took my time with the second sock, and finished them up about two weeks go. (Yes, I’m super lazy about taking pictures.) The cables on the socks look all wonky because they are random. Their placement was determined by the role of a die, hence the name. I reversed the direction of the cables for the second sock.

Dicey's crazy cables

I also crocheted myself two new dishcloths from some Lily Sugar n’ Cream cotton in colourway Urban Pastels. The second one is a bit large because I wanted to use up all the yarn in the skein. I still have a metric craptonne of kitchen cotton, so I think a secondary goal this year is to knit and/or crochet it all into dishcloths and washcloths. Guess what everyone will be getting for Christmas. lol! Seriously, though, I find my handmade dishcloths to be so much better than store-bought ones. They are thicker, scrub better, and wash like a dream. And I’ve never had trouble with any of them getting smelly or having to bleach them. I will never go back to store-bought dishcloths or sponges.

Crocheted Dishcloths

If there is any interest, maybe I can do a little draw for some dishcloths so those of you who don’t knit or crochet can give them a try. Let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in that.