What To Do With Mystery Yarn

     I love yarn. I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks.  I love how some have a beautiful sheen and how some has the best "squish factor". Sometimes, I find the best little treasures in plastic packaging with little more than the actual weight of the yarn in the package. This is mystery yarn. From what I have read online, (yes I have researched this stuff), it is called mill ends. I find most of mine at Joann's in a REALLY big bin and I dig in like the craziest dumpster diver looking for whatever catches my eye.

     Several months back, I found this gorgeous bundle of orange/yellow yarn. I had no idea what I would do with it but I knew I had to have it. It has a subtle shine and is super soft. It came home with me and sat in my stash because I just didn't know what it was supposed to be.  Yes, I sometimes think yarn is meant for a specific project.

(There were six skeins in the bundle. I used two.)

     Before I could figure this out though, I had to figure out its yarn weight.  So, I went googling and came across this post on Craftsy. Bingo! I wrapped my yarn and figured out that I was going to be working with a dk weight when I finally figured out what to do with it.

     The other day, I was perusing one of my stitch dictionaries, (those puppies are right up there with yarn, hooks and needles in my book by the way), the Crochet Stitch Dictionary by Sarah Hazell. I saw the perfect one and knew this stitch would give a scarf nice drape and the colorway of the yarn wouldn't be too busy for the scallops.

This is the progress after fifteen minutes or so of crocheting.  It works up very quickly :).

 Here's the finished scarf.  I think I'm going to have to make another and sew the two ends together.  It will make a gorgeous infinity scarf, too.

What materials and tools do you need for this scarf? Honestly, the possibilities are endless. I used about 2.75 oz of dk weight yarn and an I hook but you can make it out of worsted, bulky or chunky yarn. My scarf is 5 inches wide and about 5 feet long.  You can find the FREE pattern here in my Ravelry shop!

Sweet Seeds Cowl

I love projects that work up quickly and working with super bulky yarn is perfect for this pattern.  The Sweet Seeds Cowl is a knit pattern done with super bulky yarn (I used Lion Brand Hometown) and a size fifteen circular needle. In just a couple of hours, you can whip up one of these one size nearly anyone cowls! You can find the pattern in my Ravelry shop and best of all... it's FREE!

Gauge is Good. Gauge is your Friend.

Let me start out by saying I have been crocheting for more than twenty years and up until about a year (or so) ago, I never used gauge.  Yes, I saw it on patterns but I just blew right past it.  It wasn't until I started pattern testing for another designer that I stopped myself right in my own tracks.  Gauge? What was the point? Just a waste of time I could be using to work on the actual project, right? Oh, how wrong I was.  Figuring out which size hook/needle would obtain the right size stitches opened my eyes to a mysterious problem that had been nagging me for a very long time.

Many years ago, I wanted to crochet some gloves.  So, I started on it. I got all of my necessary tools and yarn just like the pattern listed.  I made the gloves and they looked just right..... well, almost.  Had they been for a giant, they'd have been absolutely perfect. Those suckers were huge!! I could not understand what had happened.  I followed the pattern to a "T" and all of my stitch counts were correct but I had still done something wrong, I just didn't know what. 

As the years went by, I continued to crochet (or knit) and most of the time my finished projects turned out just fine.  Every so often, I'd end up with a bigger than it should be blanket or sweater and sometimes, a smaller than I planned hat.  However, I just kept on trucking and forgot about those not quite right items. It wasn't until I actually stopped at that word, GAUGE, that everything became so clear and the mystery unraveled.  Now, I know about gauge, how very pertinent it is to a pattern and I always use the right hook to obtain that gauge.

If you want to know more about gauge, Lion brand has a nice little FAQ about it right here.

By the way, if I had a picture of those enormous gloves I would post it but that was before camera phones, digital cameras, etc. :)