Sweaters for Everything
Most knitters wind up with wee scraps of yarn after completing a project – I tend to keep my small balls of leftover yarn stored in a vase. I tend to use them up in small scrappy projects, for project repair or sometimes if I just need some “string” to tie something up, I know I’ve always got some handy. I thought I’d share some recent uses of yarn remainders with you.
On my big trip to Rhinebeck last fall, my handbag handles got chewed up in the TSA X-Ray scanner – and unfortunately the more I handled them, the worse the peeling on the handles got. Luckily for me, we were a band of knitters traveling around together, and of course at least one of us had a ball of yarn that was not currently attached to a project (thanks Kiki!) With the yarn in hand, I began to tightly wind it around the handle, much like you might if you were wrapping it around a yarn gauge to get WPI calculated. After a while, the entire damaged section was wrapped securely, and I now have a slightly wooly splash of color on my otherwise sedate black handbag. A sure sign of a knitter 🙂 The yarn I used to do the handle wrapping survived the entire trip, though it has gotten a bit fuzzy, as one might expect – but it sure beats the alternatives I was contemplating such as using black electrical tape, random duct tape…or simply trying to camouflage the damage with liberal application of a black sharpie.
Another use for remaining yarn might be reusable cup cozies:
Sized appropriately, they could be created for any variety of cups or mugs to help keep your drink warm and your hands protected – or in the summer, to help keep it cooler and reduce condensation on your hands. I picked up the tumbler you see above while in China, but I haven’t been using it very often until recently – mostly because it’s a tumbler that is built for brewing loose leaf tea…but it is not double walled – so you can imagine how hot it is right after the hot water has been added. I finally took it upon myself to remedy the situation and knitted up the cozy on the left from some remainders of my own handdyed yarns and some remaining handspun from my Rhinebeck Sunrise cardigan. The lovely cozy on the right was a gift from a friends daughter – I believe it is knit out of Malabrigo worsted. Both cozies keep my hands safe while carrying the tumbler around full of hot tea, and the thicker one does an exceptional job of keeping the tea hot! I’ve found I usually have to take my tumbler out of its sweater to help get the tea down to a drinkable temperature before slipping it back into its cozy to keep my tea warm for as long as possible.
What kinds of things do you use your yarn scraps for?
