As you may recall from the last exciting episode of this blog, right before I went on vacation, my co-workers yarn-bombed my cubicle for my birthday.
Now: I absolutely cannot have more yarn in my apartment. It's already a major problem. I'm already enacting desperate measures to lessen the stash I have.
So I figured this was a good opportunity to use up yarn just come through the front door and stash-reduce a bit at the same time. I started before I went on my vacation to Iceland, got right back to it as soon as I returned, and worked throughout the week. And when I was done (about ten minutes ago), this was the result:
What you see in the above photo are six leaf-shaped facecloths, six leaf coffee cup cuffs, and six broken-rib, buttoned coffee cup cuffs. The creamsicle variegated, cream with pastel flecks, and lavender yarn are all from the yarn bombing. The rest is stash-busting, and it would be nice to say it made a dent, but mostly it just kept things at the status quo.
The broken-rib cuffs are my own pattern, as much as such things can even be a pattern. I wanted something that was interesting-looking, quick, and not too stretchy, but a little bit. The "pattern" goes like this:
- Using worsted-weight yarn and 4.5mm or so needles, CO 15 sts.
- Row 1: K across.
- Row 2: K1, *yf, sl 1 pwise, yb, k1, rep from * to end. Note: yf and yb do not go over the needle, just between the points.
- Repeat Rows 1 & 2 for about 20cm (38 repeats for my gauge). Check against a sample coffee cup — this part should reach around the circumference with very little overlap. Note that the stitch pattern tends to be tighter at one row-end than the other — this is okay, since coffee cups are cone-shaped anyhow, and gives your cuff a shaped top and bottom.
- Buttonhole Row: K3, *sl 1 st pwise to right-hand needle, sl next st pwise to right-hand needle, lift first st over second st, rep from * 2 or 3 times, depending on your gauge and the width of your buttons. CO 2 or 3 sts (the same number you cast off) using the thumb or cable method. K3 or 5 (again, depending on how many you cast off for the buttonhole), then work another buttonhole. K3.
- Next row: work row 2 per normal, treating the CO sts just like normal sts (some will just be slipped. That's okay.).
- Repeat Rows 1 & 2 twice — 5 rows above buttonhole row. Cast off. I used a backstitch cast-off so the ends would match nicely.
- Finish ends and sew on two buttons.
Tomorrow all of these will get randomly placed on people's desks, and I'll send out an e-mail to the team explaining where they came from and how it's using up the yarn bombing. I still have about 300g of variegated acrylic to use up, but that hasn't told me what to do with it yet.
For those who will want to know: each piece takes about forty-five minutes to make. The broken-rib cuffs are slightly faster to knit, but have the extra time for adding the buttons on. The leaf cuffs are probably the fussiest, because each of the four leaves is self-finished, which means there are eight ends to darn in at the end, plus one seam to sew the first leaf to the last. Each 50g skein of Bernat cotton yielded one facecloth and two cuffs, with only three or four metres left over.
This little mini-project shows how much I'm into the aspen/birch leaf motif lately. I get the feeling there will be more examples to come.
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