Crap is relative.

A little while back, I signed up for a Crap Yarn Swap on Swap-Bot. The premise of the swap was, I thought, genius. You send $10 of yarn that has been loitering around the edges of your stash so long that you have come to loathe it. You can't think of a single thing to make with it, and you're sick of the sight of it. Off it goes to your partner. In the meantime, you get crap yarn from your upstream pal. And you, with your fresh eyes, look at your upstream partner's crap and make it into something for your downstream partner.

Brilliant, right?

RIGHT!

This was such a fantastic swap. I can't even tell you how pleased I was with the whole experience.

For my contribution of yarn, I sent of a partial skein of mohair/acrylic blend and a mystery mohair that I'd used to make a poncho for Kai last year and had no idea what to do with what was left. That yarn was seriously starting to feel like a noose, because there was a LOT left and I was feeling some major yarn guilt for not putting it to good use. So, yay, I got rid of guilt yarn! Joy!

My upstream partner was extremely generous. She sent me way more than $10 worth of yarn. She sent a skein of elann Sonata, Sinfonia, Elsebeth Lavold Angora, Bernat Boucle and Nora. (I can't remember the manufacturer of Nora, but it was that train-track style yarn with a squiggle of multi-colored wool in between.)

I poked through my downstream partner's profile and saw she needed a bag for her knitting, so I thought that would be a safe project. I thought I'd use the boucle paired with one of the cottons, but I didn't like how it looked with the colors I had, so I did some stash diving and came out with two balls of Cotton Tots in black and used it with the boucle. I just knit a large rectangle on 10.5 needles until I had a yard of the Cotton Tots left to use for seaming. I folded the bag in half and seamed up the sides and added gussets 1" in on either side of the bottom of the bag.



(Ooh, look! Renovation mess in the background!)

While diving for fabric to line it with, I came up with a flour sack I'd been saving and after reseaming it and lopping off a few inches from the top and bottom, it fit the bag perfectly with the design lining up exactly in the interior. Eeeexcellent... My plan was working... I attached some rattan handles with a bit of grosgrain ribbon, added a snap closure and called it good.



I had tried using some of the Sinfonia and Nora to make a dragonfly motif to go on the front of the bag, as my partner said she liked dragonflies and I thought the Nora would work well for the wings. However, it didn't work with the bulky yarn and looked like dookie, so I left it off. Instead, I used to Sinfonia and the Sonata to make star shaped washcloths for her.





I used the pattern for Beth's Little Star Afghan with an h hook and stopping at the 7th row of the pattern. They came out cute, if I do say so myself. I think I may whip up a bunch for my girls to use with the yarn from the sweater I recycled. They took all of maybe 30 minutes to make each of them. I heart crochet.

With the Angora (oooooh, angora--even as a blend--was so lovely to work with!), I decided to make up some fingerless gloves--another thing my partner had on her wish list. So, I started googling for patterns. Only I couldn't find any that would work with the limited yardage of the Angora. And then I found these. I double stranded the Angora to get the proper weight and used some of the remaining Boucle for the wrists. It was a simple pattern and they worked up easily. I'm not in love with the Boucle. It looks ok, but the difference in feel from the Angora was very noticeable. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything in my stash that would be any better, so they went off as is. I wouldn't be the least bit offended if my swap partner decided to snip the cuffs off and rework them.



So all of those went off the other day and should arrive in the next day or two if they haven't already. In the end, I couldn't figure out anything to do with the Nora. I never really "got" the whole novelty yarn craze and my lack of experience working with the funky stuff ended up kicking my butt. I sent it along with the FOs and figured that the 2 balls of cotton tots I pulled out of my own stash made it ok that I didn't use one of the balls of crap yarn that was sent to me.

And what did I get for a finished item from my upstream pal? Dress-up clothes for the kids!



An apron, 2 crowns and a clutch for them to use to play Cinderella. She left the crowns unfinished so I could size them to their heads, which I thought was very clever. She had quite a challenge with the yarn. I know I wouldn't have come up with anything half as cute. The apron is especially adorable, I think, and it's large enough that it fits them more like a skirt at this point. They LOVE their crowns. Abby went to get dressed this morning and came out with a t-shirt, a long skirt of Kai's that touched the ground on her, and her crown. A little princess, ready to head to Target!

Thank you, partner!!

I would absolutely do another swap like this again. It already has me looking at my own stash with a more discerning eye.

Weekend Progress

I was a productive little soul this weekend. My first FO to share is a hat made for a friend from knit club. Linda has been learning to crochet and this hat reared up and bit her on the hiney. So she loaded me up with yarn and Harmony Guides and asked me to make it for her. And, you know, for yarn and Harmony Guides, a girl will do just about anything.



The pattern is Crocheted Cloche with Tie from Vogue Knitting On the Go: Crocheted Hats. I liked this pattern. There is a mistake in it, though. In round 15 (16), they omitted a “ch1” before the “repeat from *.” Other than that, it was a very clearly written, beginner/intermediate pattern. I like how the designer worked the “headband” in to the pattern. The way the stitch pattern works, she just has you change colors for a row and the result is that it looks like you have a band woven in and out of the hat. Cute.

Made with Cascade 220 in a purple for the main color and a marled purple for the accent color. (I don’t have the ball bands, but it looks like the marled purple has been discontinued.) The color is very off in this shot. I took it under an ott light, but it looks more blue than purple in the photo. It took one skein each, but there is enough to make the same hat with the colors reversed. Or, it looks like enough to make a baby hat with the main color if you’re not in the mood to have two hats in reversed colors.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t on my UFO list, so no effect there. But it did give me one more for the FO list. w00t!

In addition to the cloche, I’m about 45 minutes away from finishing the baby sweater I posted about the other day. I just need to sew up the seams and attach the buttons. Also, the iPod cozies have all been seamed and are ready to be lined. I’m going to try and get all the things that need lining done and then do a sewing day and get them all done at the same time. So, most likely, the last two days of the UFO knit-a-thon will be a lining-a-thon.