Dinky Manor

There are very few worse examples of my OCD than my knitting stash. I have a really hard time getting rid of yarn. And by yarn I mean any piece of spun fiber that is longer than twelve inches. And by really hard time I mean never. As a result my crafty crap bureau is crammed with zip-lock bags full of tiny balls of leftover yarn from all my projects. Generally I keep a grip on this brand of crazy by knitting up striped baby hats, which I then sell at holiday craft fairs. However, since last year I was in Italy from September until December, I didn’t do my yearly yarn purge. Also, I need a break from knitting baby hats since I made so many of them for gifts last year.

For the Zero Dollar Hipster Baby Sweater I used the Crystal Palace toddler vest pattern. It has become my go-to pattern for baby gifts because it’s one of those basic, unbreakable, and super versatile patterns. You can get endless numbers of different “looks” from the same pattern, just by using different yarns.

The hipster baby sweater ended up with its 70′s inspired color way because I knew I had enough of each yarn to make wide matching stripes on both the front and the back of the sweater. For me, knitting with leftover yarn is one long Proustian exercise. When I knit, I remember what music I was listening to, what television show I was watching, who I was talking to, and where I was sitting for each and every project. Every color of this sweater was a different memory for me.

The robin’s egg blue yarn wool was given to me by my friend Andrea. I used it originally to make the Mod-dler Vest for my friend Lauren.

The orange tweed wool came from a theater wardrobe job I did last year. I literally pulled the ball of sock yarn out of the garbage. I doubled the sock yarn to match the gauge of the other yarns.

The honey yellow bamboo yarn was leftover from the honeycomb scarf I gave to my beekeeping mentor last year

The gray and green tweed wool was leftover from a scarf I made for my father for his college reunion. I knit the entire scarf on 9/11 while watching the news coverage of the attacks.

The dark red cashmere is from a scarf that I made for Sissy Spacek in 2001.

The putty gray alpaca yarn was from a scarf I made for my sister for her 38th birthday.

The buttons came from my enormous button collection that I’ve had since childhood.

Have you upcycled or made a project out of scraps recently? Feel free to link to a picture or a description of your latest work in the comments section.