As I was imagining projects for our new Artist’s Assortments, I worked through lots of yarn, leaving precious snippets I couldn’t bear to toss. It’s a brain teaser, anyway, to figure out how to use these little tumbleweeds of tails, so I decided to make the whole thing a challenge. I sorted the pile by length so that anything 12 inches or longer became Freeform fodder, and the shorter lengths were designated for Freelace.
Since I had a lot of colors, an ombre Fair-isle stripe was possible. I alternated 2 stitches of warm color with 2 stitches of cool. I left all the tails hanging as I changed colors and later made myself use them exactly where they were. Only then was I allowed (I boss myself around sometimes) to add more yarn. A few crocheted fans, some I-cord with leaves and some strange, cup-shaped flowers finished off whatever this is…… It actually is a perfect size to become a cuff, but I think it will become the spine for my next fiber “sketchbook”. (It would be fine with me if it just lay around watching soaps and eating bonbons, but I like it enough to try to use it right away.)
This little exercise is something I do often – a pile of miscellaneous materials, a few “guidelines” (no rules), no expectations and a little bit of time. If nothing else, it adds some wrinkles to the gray matter. Lots of times the results end up in a heap in my studio which eventually collapses onto the floor in a glorious hodgepodge that always inspires a new project. The point is to exercise the thought process and to try new things. The result does not have to be useful in any other way.
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