FO Friday – using scraps

This month’s Designers Challenge over on Ravelry was to use scraps to make something in the free-form technique. Now, if you search for freeform knitting or crochet on the web, you’ll see all sorts of examples – but most of those are too, well, um … messy, in my opinion. They’re considered Art and less focused on function. I had a hard enough time doing random last year in my weather afghan … this was stretching things. Jenny Dowde’s website has a good definition of what freeform is – mainly that there is no one rule and it means different things to each of us.

So … my idea of freeform was to list 20 different types of crochet stitches, find four different colors of scrap yarn and work them randomly. Being the geek I am, I used a random number generator to pick them for me :-).

What I came up with was a little bag/purse for Little Chick to use.

My reaction? Meh. I’m not all that impressed with it – I think partially because I didn’t like working with many of the yarns. Little Chick loved it though! Surprising since it’s mostly yellow and not pink.

Pattern: freeform scrap purse
Designer: me
Yarns: various scraps in worsted and sport weight
My Ravelry page

Almost 6 years ago, Papa built a set of cubicles that I could use for yarn storage.  However, shortly after Little Chick was born, I moved my stash to the office closet (it has shelves), so the cubicles went into Little Chick’s closet. We used to store things like diapers, wipes, baby blankets, etc.  She’s 4 now and much of that no longer applies.  I’ve thought about using it for her clothing but the problem is most fabric baskets I’ve seen for purchase are 12″ square and these cubes are ~10″.

So, the other stash-busting project I finished this week was a basket for her room. I decided to call this a “boll weevil” basket – because it ate up cotton yarn very well 🙂 Although I will admit, it’s only half “stash”; the colored yarn was already in my stash but I paired it up with newly purchased white cotton.

I didn’t make it very tall because it’s only going to hold socks or underwear … and also because working with double-thickness cotton yarn in a tight gauge was hurting my hands. I had thought to make two of these, but I’ll have to take a break before I decide whether or not to make a second one.

I still have a TON of these two cotton yarns left over. That’s what happens when you purchase cones of the stuff – 400g / 700 yards to use up!

Pattern: Boll Weevil Basket
Designer: me
Yarns: Pisgah Yarns Article 74C Country Cotton Cones and Peaches & Creme Yarn
Colorways: 173 Spring Meadows and White
My Ravelry page

I’m also trying an amigurumi challenge using basic shapes and trying to develop an animal. I was assigned a teardrop as my challenge shape.  I started with a partial teardrop (that doesn’t count) and added a bottom section. Looks kinda like a beak, doesn’t it? Hmm … what could I be making?