Knit Yourself a Special Little Something

You know I’m all about finding and sharing patterns that help you use your yarn leftovers. Here’s a sweet little shawl that’s meant to be made with the leftovers from a couple of other projects, as it calls for about half a skein each of two colors of sport weight yarn.

The Garter Smidgen by Fatimah Hinds was designed to be a relaxing knit that’s perfect for using up some leftover yarn. It needs 360 to 400 yards total (or about 329 to 366 meters) and measures 64 inches (162.5 cm) long and 17 inches/43 cm at its widest point. The crescent shape is worked in one piece, with wedges of garter and stockinette stitch broken up by eyelets.

It’s designed to use the amount of yarn you have, whether that’s two partial skeins, some minis or several smaller leftovers (since you can easily make more stripes, or wider stripes, as you like depending on the yarn you have available).

It’s a pretty quick and easy project worked in sport weight yarn, though of course you could use sock, DK or even worsted weight yarn, depending on the nature of your leftovers.

The pattern is available on Ravelry. This is actually the second shawl in the “smidgen” series. Fatimah also has a super cute little sock weight, single-color shawl worked in linen stitch that’s designed to use a single special skein, though here again if you’ve got a smaller skein and some leftovers or mini skeins you could throw in some stripes to make it bigger. (That pattern is also on Ravelry.)

Speaking of mini skeins, if you need even more ideas of what to do with your special little skeins (or lots of yarn leftovers), check out my roundup of mini skein/advent calendar knitting projects. These projects are sure to inspire you to bust your stash in a beautiful way.

[Photo: Fatimah Hinds]

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Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough.

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern.

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed.

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do.

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces.

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls.

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry.

40+ Hot Pads You Can Sew For The Kitchen [Sewing]

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Double Knit an Infinity Scarf

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