I know it would ordinarily be obvious to anyone who was thinking straight but in my defence I was overcome by yarn fumes and the strong urge of spring startitis.
Crochet, as we all know uses up more yarn than knitting. Which makes it ideal for stashbusting purposes - although careful planning can be needed to ensure you don’t run out of yarn.
When starting my corner to corner crochet blanket I thought briefly about joining up all my scraps into a large magic ball and just letting the colours change as they fell naturally. That was far too easy of course and didn’t quite suit the way my brain works so, after a bit of experimentation I decided to go for two rows of each colour to produce a striped effect.
So far, so good.
The problem is of course, I’m sure you following at the back have already picked this up, is that as the rows get longer I am going to need a lot more yarn. And I mean A Lot more. The average mini skein has 20g yarn (approx 80m) and much of my scrap yarn doesn’t weigh more than this either. My blanket is currently measuring 50cm along the two long sides and I am already using up about 15g yarn per stripe.
It doesn’t take a maths genius to figure this out, but it has taken me two days. Draw your own conclusions. But, as the loveable Baldrick of Blackadder fame would say “I have a cunning plan”.
Short of abandoning my perfectionist scruples and switching to a magic ball philosophy, the next best thing is to make my blanket from 4 panels. I will work the first panel until the stripe takes up 20g yarn and then start the decreases. Based on where I am now I estimate that each panel will be 60cm (24") square - giving me a decent sized lap blanket of 120 x 120cm (47 x 47"). I will end up with lots of small bits of yarn which will be ideal for adding into the other 3 squares - ensuring that the blanket still has a cohesive feel.
This also has the happy accident of keeping the project high on the portability stakes. Rendering a project perfect for ‘sofa knitting only’ is the kiss of death for many of my long term projects, and this way I can still carry it along with me (and it can come on holiday with me too).
