Finished Object – Scrap Blanket

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I present my second finished and washed scrap blanket.

A blanket with diagonal stripes of varying lengths, widths, and colors with a blue and green border laying across the top of a bed.

It’s made of all the unknown scraps from my stash box, so it’s definitely got a few bits that felted slightly in the wash. But not enough to affect it too much. 

A black dachshund puppy laying on the blanket piled up on the bed.

It’s definitely passed the puppy test. In fact, it’s passed the puppy test so well that he’s basically claimed it as a nap spot and I’ve taken to leaving it and most of the rest of my blankets on the floor at the end of my bed as his cozy area.

A ball of triple-stranded yarn with each strand a different color, the outer layer with two shades of pink and black, and inner layers involving blues, purples, yellows, and oranges in addition to the black strand.

Like I said, this was random scraps, so I don’t actually have a lot of precise info, but I can outline the general process. The base is a C2C blanket. I think this is the tutorial I learned from a few years ago, though if it isn’t I still think it’s a good, comprehensive one: C2C blanket blog post tutorial from Sarah Maker. I started in my heavier worsted weight yarns and used the magic knot method to create a ball of yarn to work from and add subsequent balls of yarn created the same way. With my thinner scraps I just used more strands together to get the right thickness. I “measured” by laying it on my bed and working until one side went across the foot of the bed, then turned one corner while lengthening the other side until it was as long as the bed before turning to make the final corner. 

The inner portion of the blanket before the border was added laying on a light wooden floor.

Once the middle had four finished corners, I took apart another C2C blanket that had been abandoned for a very long time because I ran out of the colors and used it to crochet a 6-row border around the outside using a pattern from the Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary and making up the corners.
Scrap blankets are my favorite way to use up scraps, especially if you are like me and just have an entire box you need to use up. I just probably would suggest that, unlike me, you wait until the heat wave dies down before you start working on one.

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Six knit hats laid out in two rows of three. From top left: light blue body with triangles of textured stitches and a ribbed brim in shades of purple, a plain hat with puddles of green and blue, a brown and black striped ribbed beanie with blue stripes in the brim, a bubble-stitch teal hat with black and neon blue, purple, green, and pink striped brim, another green and blue hat from the same yarn as the one above it, and a sparkled black hat with short teal brim.

September Hat Roundup

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(Image description: Six knit hats laid out in two rows of three. From top left: light blue body with triangles of textured stitches and a ribbed brim in shades of purple, a plain hat with puddles of green and blue, a brown and black striped ribbed beanie with blue stripes in the brim, a bubble-stitch teal hat with black and neon blue, purple, green, and pink striped brim, another green and blue hat from the same yarn as the one above it, and a sparkled black hat with short teal brim.)

September’s official hat count is six. Technically there are a few sitting here next to me that are finished and waiting for ends to be woven, but since they will be coming out of the bath in October, I’m counting those for October. These hats are made from a combination of scraps, reclaimed abandoned projects, and a couple partial skeins I found in the bag with the abandoned projects.

To keep this easy on me, I’m just going to go clockwise from top left in these explanations. We start out in the top left with a combination of a reclaimed baby hat and one of those found skeins. Process: Provisional cast-on 80 stitches with size US 8 needles, knit until I ran out of the purple and green variegated yarn, which pool-striped nicely at this gauge, and then bring the bottom up to create a doubled brim, switching to size US 10 needles and the teal yarn. Then I worked pattern 18 from “Keiko Okamoto’s Japanese Knitting Stitches” (pg. 13) four times around and repeating all 16 rows twice. Then I worked it in a modified manner across the decreases for the crown, but if I do this again I’d just knit the crown instead of carrying the pattern up.

Next we have the green and blue hats, which I’ll explain together because they are literally the same thing. The yarn for these is reclaimed from a C2C pattern I was creating that I ran out of yarn for. I created a magic knot ball and used some of it for the border of my scrap blanket. Then I decided to chain the entire rest of it, and use that to knit as many hats as possible, which turned out to be a large and a small one. I started each at the top with a crocheted magic ring before picking up
the stitches on knitting needles (size US 13, I think) and knitting a fairly basic hat pattern. You can find a reel of bits of the process here.

Last across the top row is the sock-weight scrap hat I’ve been working as my on-the-go project for a while using the helical knitting method to make sure I ran out of all the yarn at the same time and give the nice stripe pattern I ended up with.Below that is another hat in a similar manner to the first hat, but with an extra 8 stitches to make it a large (going for a fairly even mix of medium and large adult sizes
with some small mixed in), and using pattern 11 (pg. 11 / 45).

Our last hat, bottom left, is the same at the previous hat, using pattern 24 (pg. 15), though it may be difficult to see in the sparkly black yarn.

I’ve gotten into another set of reclaimed yarn from a sweater that was entirely too warm for me to wear ever, so I’m hoping to at least make another 6 for October. I’ve got another blanket to take apart, as well.

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Finished Object – Trellis Tee 2

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You know what’s really difficult to photograph? Black yarn, almost as difficult as it is to see properly while working with it.

A close up of a white woman’s torso standing in a garden in the sun facing the camera wearing a knit shirt made mostly of black yarn with stripes of brown and blue on the upper third and a skirt with white and black stripes.

But I managed to grab a couple pictures of this finished Trellis Tee by Lauren at Mother of Purl. I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but even though it was my “cooler” version of the previous one I made in acrylic yarn, it was still too hot for the second summer heatwave we’ve been having recently.

A close up of a white woman’s torso standing in a garden in the sun facing away from the camera wearing a knit shirt made mostly of black yarn with stripes of brown and blue on the upper third and a skirt with white and black stripes.

This version is made from Knit Picks Cotlin yarn in varying colors of scraps I had in my basket, hence the stripes near the top working in the brown and blue.

A close up of the top of a knit shirt showing the varying-sized stripes of black, blue, and brown going toward the neckline.

Unfortunately, I didn’t bother to keep any notes of how much of each color I had, so this isn’t a very helpful post in terms of yarn specifics. But what I can be helpful about is that this pattern is wonderfully written in a “recipe style,” meaning you take your measurements, make a swatch, and do a tiny bit of super easy calculator math to get your cast-on number, and then you are set.

A close up of the lace detail panel on the left side of the front in black yarn with a “wheat stalk” pattern.

The one modification I did (aside from the striping) was to work in the round where the pattern normally calls for seaming the sides. That was also necessitated by the fact I was working from scraps, so that I could keep track of where I needed to start adding the other colors. 

I have finished a few more projects, and am slightly motivated to do those write-ups as well, so hopefully a string of finished object Fridays is going to happen over the next few weeks.