Strategies for Using All Your Yarn

I make my interest in using your yarn stash pretty clear (I mean, I have actually written an ebook about it), and one great way to use your stash is to make sure that you use as much of the yarn you have in a particular project as you can so you won’t add leftover yarn to your stash.

Since I’m often making things up as I go along (whether that’s because I’m designing on the fly or working from a pattern without being sure I have enough yarn to make it) I’ve come up with a few tips that might help you if you’re trying to use all the yarn you have on a particular project.

The story behind this post was that I had some really great yarn I wanted to make into a tank top. I found a pattern (the tank top from KnitCroAddict) and I thought I had enough yarn based on what the pattern called for. But I also tend to like tops to be longer than a lot of patterns suggest, so I wanted to make sure I could make my top as long as possible without running out of yarn.

The main strategy that helps with this process is to do whatever finishing you can before the garment is actually finished. If you’re knitting a sweater, knit the sleeves first. In this case it was knitting the edgings on the neckline and the armholes.

Of course it’s also possible to work in a different yarn in a stripe or another way if you need your yarn to go farther, this was more about wanting to use all of a great yarn that I had and not really having anything that went with it to add in.

Check out my other strategies for using all the yarn and how my tank top turned out over at Our Daily Craft.

Knitting Patterns to Use Your Bulky Yarn Stash

Knit a Basket with Your Chunky Yarn Stash

Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Yarn Stash?

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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