Take Your Scrap Yarn on a Voyage

If all the writing I’ve been doing over the past few months about using your yarn stash and odd balls hasn’t yet inspired you to take on a stash-busting project, maybe this set of patterns will do it.

I love Wool & Pine Designs because many of their designs are really thoughtful in the way they use stash to make something that doesn’t look like a scrap yarn project.

And so it is with the Voyage set. These coordinating patterns for a cardigan, hat and mittens feature bold bands of colorwork such that each section can be two different colors, or you can go through a rotation through the project if you have more of some colors that you want to use.

To take the patterns one at a time, the cardigan is worked from the bottom up, mostly in the round, using steeks for the center front and sleeves. The sleeves are worked seamlessly from the top down using short row shaping, and are shown in the same color as the edging of the sweater. It has 10 sizes, with chest measurements from 30 to 66 inches (76 to 168 cm) and is meant to be worn with no to 4 inches/10 cm positive ease.

The mittens and hat use the same kind of stitch patterns, and you’ll probably want to make sure you have enough yarn to make your mittens match. Or not, if that’s more your style. The mittens are sized for small, medium and large adults, while the hat comes in sizes from newborn through adult large (eight sizes in all). That’s plenty to go through all your leftover sock yarn, mini skeins, skeins that will never really become socks, and then some!

All of the patterns are available on Ravelry as follows: cardigan | mittens | hat. If you order all three at the same time you’ll get a 20 percent discount.

[Photo: Wool & Pine Designs]

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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