Stash Busting with Knitted Toys

I don’t knit a lot of toys, and I don’t know why that is, because I always enjoy doing it and they’re so sweet and fun to look at and play with.

But dolls and other toys are a great way to use up bits of stash because a teddy bear is still adorable in stripes, or you can make different parts of a toy in different colors to use up some of your little bits.

Looking for more Knitting patterns for Teddy Bears? Check it out here.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Dolls: I love these little Knubblechen dolls from Ravelry user pzi888. They’re worked in sock yarn, and there is an English translation. Manne has little cork dolls (there’s a translation for this simple pattern, too), while Tonya Gunn has knit gnomes in a smaller version than those first ones.

Animal toys: I love Mary MCK’s Syndey the Stash-Busting Snake, but there’s also Socktopus by Laura Edwards, Susan B. Anderson’s adorable Elefante, Sheldon the turtle by Ruth Homrighaus, Rebecca Danger’s Bunny Nuggets, the Owls Two Ways by Ana Clerc (that’s knit or crochet) and Bob, from Mochimochi Land, which may not be an animal so much as, well, I don’t really know (he’s inspired by the plastic floaty thing in the toliet. Eww.).

Balls and other toys: Check out Celestine from Berroco (my mom made my daughter one of these once!), the Braided Ball by Marleen Hartog and Doddy by Carol Feller, which is a ball made out of pentagons.

That should get you going! If you have any favorite toy patterns, I hope you’ll share!

Next Pattern:

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift.

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style.

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills.

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather.

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do.

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall.

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills.

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths

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