Wednesday 10 June 2015

Use It or Lose It: Unravelling

This week's crafting has been all about simple, relaxing projects - bits of restful craftiness squeezed into the start and end (and sometimes even the middle) of my working days.

Mostly I've been working on my patchwork blanket: using bits of yarn left over from other projects to make mini moss stitch squares to (very slowly) make a colourful, slightly chaotic blanket.


I've been knitting squares with bright yarn left over from my (still in progress) happy rainbow blanket, and with blue, white and grey yarn left over from my (now abandoned) attempt to record a year's weather in the medium of fluffy pompoms. In between knitting sessions, I've been sewing together the finished squares (and some I made earlier) and adding them to the blanket.

Inspired by my Use It or Lose It challenge, I've also admitted to myself that there are a couple of knitting projects on my "in progress" list that I'm never actually going to finish. So, I've unravelled them to put the yarn to good use as mini blanket squares.


This heap of yarn was originally going to be a stripey coffee cosy. I knitted it into stripes several years ago but never got round to turning it into a cosy like I'd planned... and now so many years have passed that I'm actually no longer friends with the person for whom it was going to be a gift! So, it's definitely time to abandon that particular project.


And this yarn? This used to be some patchwork squares, knitted by my mum 30+ years ago. She'd planned to make a blanket like this one but she never finished it. A couple of decades later I turned most of the squares into a trio of cushions that now have pride of place on the daybed in my studio.

There were a few extra squares left over that I never really knew what to do with. I made a half-hearted attempt to turn them into purses but never finished them - mainly, I think, because I was making "something" with them for the sake of it, rather than actually making something I wanted/needed.

It's great to be re-using the yarn my mum knitted with all those years ago, and especially to be knitting moss stitch squares just like hers!

2 comments:

bairozan said...

The feeling of accomplishment is great when we start working again on old projects with the hope to finish them! And when we actually do, we're so proud of ourselves. Even though sometimes a long cherished project doesn't get finished for some reason :(

Bugs and Fishes said...

Oh yes, actually finishing something = an amazing feeling! Life happens though and there are never enough hours to make all the things we'd hoped to make, it's natural to end up with a bunch of unfinished projects along the way :)