Get Started on Stash Busting with Ziggy Triangle

I think that many knitters have as a new year’s resolution or goal to use more of their stash whenever a new year rolls around. I say pretty much every year that I’m not going to buy more yarn (unless, you know, I really need it for a project) and even when I’m not accumulating much, it still feels like I’m not making much of a dent in what I already have.

If you’re looking for projects that can help you use stash — whether it’s little bits of leftovers or whole skeins — I’ll be sharing more of that sort of stuff as we head into the new year and beyond. But for now, I’ve got the Ziggy Triangle by Leila Raven, which is perfect for using a solid yarn and a multicolored yarn, or a solid and a bunch of odd balls.

The pattern was designed for sport weight yarn but it’s easy to customize if you want to make it with different yarn. This would be a fun one to use your advent calendar minis or whatever bold yarn you have on hand.

It features a lacy zigzag pattern, and the designer recommends a smooth and colorful yarn paired with a more neutral, fuzzy yarn so you get a contrast in textures as well as in colors.

Because this is worked as a triangle, you can make it any size you want, just make sure you know how much yarn went into the first half so you leave enough for the second half (you can weigh your yarn before you start and through the process to see when you need to start decreasing).

As written the pattern makes a sweet little neck kerchief, but again, you can always make it bigger if you want, if you have more yarn or use a heavier weight yarn instead of the sport weight.

You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[photo: Leila Raven]

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette.

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up).

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley.

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design.

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like.

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going.

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]

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