Hello…July! Well, almost…

Hello…July! Well, almost…

I haven’t posted in a while, but that does not mean I haven’t been crocheting.

 

I have been working with a lot of different yarns, I bought some, and was gifted some on a trip (used some of that up already). I’ve been using some that I already had by creating new color combinations with different colorways of one of my favorite yarns with oddballs and making fun color combos. I had to take a little break because I needed to make a shower gift in a hurry. It’s the end of June and most excitingly… I have passed the halfway point of my hat and scarf goal, made a single hat and also made two red scarves. Things are going well, summer has just begun which means lots of outside concerts and movies where I can sit and watch and crochet.

Here are a few things that I’ve been working on…

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I went into my working stash and pulled out some yarn that I bought at a great discount. After a test run, I bought a lot, so I try to only use a bit of it each year until it’s used up. That way groups won’t get six or seven sets in the same color in a donation batch. The browns (Lion Brand, Shimmerie – discontinued) was my most recent at-work project until I only had a few inches to work on and brought it home to finish. The multi-colored self striping yarn is Red Heart’s discontinued Colorscape in Rome. I really like this yarn, and it was discontinued when I happened upon it. I’m looking for a similar yarn that I would like.

Premier makes great yarn and I buy from them frequently. Puzzle is one of my current favorites, their sister company, Universal Yarn also makes Major which is the same weight, just different colors and price point. I have a smallish stash of leftover oddballs from projects because one ball of Puzzle or Major won’t quite make a set. So, depending on the pattern, I have varying amounts of the yarn leftover. I decided to take a few colors and use them to make one-of-a-kind colorful sets. Puzzle uses the similar colors but doesn’t follow the same color changes as Major. I had a bit of some yarn from Ice Yarns, a Turkish company. It’s very similar to Puzzle and Major, but doesn’t have specific names and as it happens with me… It was discontinued. The weight is about the same, so I included some of the Ice yarn with the Puzzle/Major combos. I like the variety. Most of all, the yarns are machine wash and dry and soft. I could buy just another ball of the Puzzle but the dye lots may not be the same. The experiments with the colors were interesting.

There are a few more small balls that I wound into cakes to get a better idea of how much I have and what I can combine into sets. For one set, I played a bit of yarn chicken, and I might just make a few warm hats with what I have combined with a Puzzle yarn that’s in shades of gray, to save me from the frustration.

Overall, I like the outcome and use up the bits and pieces (something I learned from my grandmothers, not to be wasteful).

Happy crocheting!