A few years ago, I made a Mitred Squares Cushion for my mother-in-law as a present. It was an enjoyable project using leftover sock yarns. As anyone who has been reading the posts on the Knitting Squirrel for a while will realise I love knitting socks And anyone who knits a lot of socks will know that there is always yarn leftover from these projects.
Using Leftover Sock Yarn
How to Knit a Striped Blanket
The Striped Blanket combines the simplicity of a strippy quilt with the busyness of leftover colourful sock yarns wonderfully well particularly when edged with the delicious Blueberry Bonbon contrast colour.
The construction of the Striped Blanket is elegantly simple as I wanted a project that I could easily carry with me and knit anywhere. This soft squishy garter stitch blanket fit the bill. [Read More]
Striped Blanket
Today is Thursday, and tonight at 8 pm, we all thank the courageous and caring people who are at the coalface of this pandemic. Hearing the clapping of hands as people stand in their doorways and at their garden gates along with the Harland & Wolffe horns echoing across the city gives a glimmer of light in the dark and my thoughts turn to all those who have been touched in any way by these events.
How are you staying positive while you are staying safe at home?[Read More]
Knitting Plans for 2020
A New Year and a New Decade… Wishing you an amazing knitting filled 2020!
Goodness but time seems to have flown by. It is hard to believe that it is mid-January already!
What are your knitting plans for 2020? I wonder if you have been casting on any new projects for the start of 2020? Or, have you set yourself a challenge to cast off some older WIP’s that have been hanging around for a couple of years? Perhaps, like me, you are continuing with your projects in hand rather than starting something new.
No matter what you’ve decided to do, there is nothing quite as soothing to the spirit as relaxing with your knitting in hand. It doesn’t really matter where you are, just the mindful repetition of knitting each individual stitch is a form of meditation.
Of course, some projects are more suitable for working on while chatting in a cafe with friends, while others are better kept for knitting at home in front of the fire while watching an episode of Vera on TV (the new season has started and Brenda Blethyn is as perfect as ever in the role). For some projects, I need a small table to hold the knitting pattern and my tracker notes so I know where I am in the pattern.
These aren’t the only WIP’s but they’re the ones that I’m most actively pursuing and really enjoying knitting at the moment.
Purple Ripples Hat
Hand dyed sock yarn is truly beautiful and we’ve all fallen in love with that perfect skein and brought it home with us. I love to use up all of my left over hand dyed sock yarn. Small quantities of less than 10g are destined to become mitred squares.
Regular visitors to the Knitting Squirrel will have noticed that I love knitting socks. When I knit a pair of socks for my mum, my sister or myself, I normally have between 30-35g of yarn leftover. This isn’t enough for a pair of fingerless mitts as they take about 50g of sock yarn.[Read More]
How to Knit a Mitred Square Blanket
There are lots of different ways to knit a mitred square. This is how I knit my Mitred Square Blanket. I chose to use an analogous colour scheme of green, turquoise, teal, blue, purple, cerise as much as possible. Most of the yarns are either hand dyed: semi-solid, tonal, variegated, or commercial self patterning. A few other colours did creep in as part of a multi coloured variegated yarn or commercial sock yarn. These just add an extra sparkle to the finished blanket. I loved the tiny touches of orange, red, brown and zingy green.
This is a long post as I’ve taken lots of photos. I know that for many people I may go into too much detail, but I like to do the tutorial posts so that they will enable a beginner knitter to be able to do the project. This is actually a great project for a beginner as the mitred squares are easy to do.[Read More]
Sea Blues Leftover Sock Yarn Socks
The Sea Blues Leftover Sock Yarn Socks used the 4 yarns that were used in the Blue Fair Isle Leftovers Socks with the addition of a 5th yarn. One was a commercial sock yarn and the other four yarns were indie hand dyed yarns. As is often the case with remnants of sock yarn the tags and labels have been lost or mislaid or have ended up in my bag of labels from previous projects. If I’d been sensible, I’d have tied a piece of the yarn around the label or to the tag, but I wasn’t really thinking ahead.
Leftover Sock Yarn Socks
If you love knitting socks, you can’t help but to accumulate leftover sock yarn. And if you are anything like me you keep all the leftovers since it is very difficult to throw away yarn that you loved enough to want to buy in the first place. When I started knitting these socks I decided to use lots of different yarns but within an analogous colour scheme of pinky-purples, purples and blues. These include a wide range of sock yarns from hand dyed yarns to the lovely printed patterned yarns.
I’ll include a cautionary tale at this point![Read More]
Mitred Square Scarf
I’ve been so much fun using up leftover sock yarn from my stash. I’ve combined mitred squares and stripes in this beautiful elegant Mitred Square Scarf.
It has been interesting playing with my stash of leftover sock yarn in an analogous colour scheme from blues to purples with sparks of green and pink. I adore these cool colours together. It gives a wonderful feeling of an Impressionistic painting with the subtle movement of colour.[Read More]
Mitred Squares Blanket – Part 1
Last year, I spent a little while looking through my stash of 4 ply and sock yarns, and decided that I needed to use some of the leftovers. With this in mind, I started thinking about different projects for using up this beautiful yarn. I’m really enjoying thinking about and planning all the projects that I want to make using this gorgeous yarn.
For a very long time I have been knitting using 4ply and sock yarn. When I first started knitting clothes for the Sasha doll girls, boys, toddlers and babies, I began amassing a collection of these yarns in a myriad of colours. I have many part balls and scraps ranging in every colour in the colour wheel. All stored in airtight plastic crates and sorted by colour. In addition, I have boxes of small quantities of scraps from projects that I have finished over the years.[Read More]
