What to do with these mini skeins?

image of five 20g skeins of yarn, going from left to right is an ombre from bright turquoise on the left to purple in the middle and bright magenta on the right.

Futret 10g set - Emission

The Blog post I promised about a week ago and then didn't, I am really sorry. 

My intended plan for this is to show you some clever ideas to use mini skeins for or all those leftovers that I know you all have laying about. I think i will do a separate post on patterns I want to make up and then another with patterns I have used and can vouch for. Instead of one giant post.

So lets kick off with some ideas,                 

3 foot white christmas tree, covered in baubles that are way too big for it with a 2d sloth with a glitter bow as the star on the top

I want to first show you what I'm doing for #stashvent . I have a baby Christmas tree, she's about three feet tall, you know the ones from Tesco/Asda/your supermarket of choice that always come in cute colours. Well that little dude needed a tree skirt, a totally kitsch multi coloured tree skirt. I don't have the brain power to design my own pattern (shout out to all you designers out there) but fell in love with this style on pinterest. The pattern is written for Aran weight yarn , but obvs all my ends are 4 ply so i decided to wing it and see how it went. Turns out its fine by just doing the volume of stitches needed to go around your tree.                    

a multicoloured crochet star tree skirt round the bottom of a tiny plastic christmas tree and a large green polka dot bauble hanging on one side

Christmas Tree Skirt by Donna Mason-Svara

So if you want to make your own i did 14 repeats of startup stitches and i will be doing a row a day until the 25th of December which takes you to row 24 on the pattern, and then i want to copy my inspo one and put a row of pompoms. I'm going to do the button band and the edging after stashvent, just because I am being lazy. Rooting through all my ends i hauled out the ones in the pink, purple and blue wheelhouse just because if there were too many colours i would make a mess, and also a bit of a theme is a good thing. 

a multicoloured square blanket sitting on  a patterned black and white sofa.

Do i need to include scrap blankets here? I mean i will but I'm sure this is something you have considered. Just one look on instagram and you will find TONNES of inspiration, but my top two at the moment are the mitred square blanket and the granny stripe blanket (i blame Amy Florence as hers are stunning!)                    

close up of knitted square blanket, a pink speckled square is right in the centre

I am currently working on a mitred square blanket that will hopefully be gigantic enough to cover my super king size bed (wtf was i thinking) and to make it even easier I'm only using one colourway once. NO REPEATS! Its safe to say i'ts not finished, but its such a great project to pick up when you just are not feeling it! To give you an example of size my squares are 50 sts in total (25sts on each side) knit in 4 ply and make each square roughly   cm squared. But please remember my tension is MEGA loose, i have to go down a full needle size to get gauge on most patterns so although I'm knitting on a 3.5mm, this will be totally different for you.                

a pile of multicoloured ends of yarn. most are dishevelled little balls

My plan is then to take all the left overs from THAT scrap project and make a granny stripe blanket. I'm just going to use colours at random and just crochet until the left over is finished so it will be a true scrap blanket. I have no idea about stitches and sizes as i haven't started it yet. 

a women and a springer spaniel sat on a black and white sofa, wrapped in a multicoloured and multitexture blanket

I will also throw in a mention to Stephen west garter squish blanket which absolutely EATS yarn and works for any thickness of yarn, you can just double up strands or triple them or even hold 10 strands together if you want. Its also a really great project for using that weird yarn that we all have in our stash. You know, the sari silk, the ribbon yarn, the ones with pompoms in it randomly! Even eyelash yarn! Yes we have all been there.               

a close up of a pink sock with a large patch of pastel coloured darning

Something else that's ace for mini skeins but more likely for leftovers is darning. I've really been enjoying bright colours to fix all the holes in my thick boot socks (sadly not hand knitted) I have a dog that like to “play” with your feet and many a hole has been ripped into these socks. Using a bright yarn or self stripping yarn,

1. makes it more exciting to darn and

2. makes the darn patch cute to look at!

I'm not very good at invisible mending but can get on board with Tom of Hollands visible mending!                           

Futret 10g set - Cloud Top

Right so mini skeins, these little dudes are so bloody pretty, but what to do with them? I will cover patterns in my next post as there are SO MANY awesome ones.

I'm going to go with the notion that you haven't gone and bought hundreds of mini skeins, but maybe a set of 5. (no judgement if you have hundreds, you haven't seen my stash.

I'm going to start with a plain old pair of socks. Now i am not a sock knitter, its not because i don't enjoy knitting socks. Its just my gauge is so loose that they end up like fishnet stockings after one wear...that's why i knit sock tubes on my knitting machine. ANYWAY If you had a beautiful set of minis and a nice plain sock pattern (or even one with some texture) you could make some beautiful socks. Just decide how much of each mini you want to use (MAFFS) and off you go. You could do stripes, or a fade ( so knit a row with colour A, then a row with colour B,then another with A ,then another B but keep going with the B onto the next chunk) or if you are feeling adventurous a wee bit of a colour work.

Id be more likely to make a pair of wristies or finger-less gloves and OMG you could do stripes and different coloured fingers! 

This technique can literally be applied to anything, such as a hat, shawl, scarf, willy warmer, dog jumper. Just go nuts. 

a rainbow shape made out of small scrap balls of yarn, on the left of the shape it starts at a mixture of red to pink, yellow and orange, green, blue, purple and ending in greys. the balls are all different variations of the colour

Something id really love to see/ want to do myself is a cardigan but going through the rainbow. I really like the ROY G BIV by Park Williams and i will make one one day, but i really want to get all these ends and minis used and putting them all into one garment would be so many levels of awesome. But would you do red at each cuff and work into the violet or start at red on one cuff and work to the violet on the other side? TOO MANY OPTIONS. 

Right well i hope that has given you some food for thought, check back next week for some patterns that i think will be bad ass for mini skeins (or leftovers) See you next time

LJ x


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