The Big Box of Boucle

Back to knitting!

Most of my yarn is organized (hah!) on a couple of bookshelves in the spare room, where I can see it, and it's all nice and lovely. However, I have this box at the bottom of the shelves, which I have been up till now trying to ignore.



This is all yarn that I bought around 2004/2005 when I restarted knitting. I had no yarn in my house, so I apparently bought any I could find! I bought any random yarn from charity shops, just to have something to knit with (this was before I knew about all the yarn stores near me, and wasn't sure if you could even buy such a thing as nice yarn in Scotland! :D I've since found out, of course, that you most definitely can!!!)

It's mostly boucle, all in pale pastel baby colours. It's been sitting in that box for years now, since I organized all my yarn and couldn't think of a section to put this into, and just threw it into the box and threw the box in the corner :)

But recently, without even a conscious effort, I've been using it! In fact, that is the box now, after another tidy up, untangling of a huge mess of yarn ends, and with some of the yarn gone. Seriously, I couldn't even close the box before! It was bad. Very bad. Run away and hide in the cupboard bad.

But like I said, I must have gone through an unconscious clearing up phase in my head. I was a bit stuck for things to knit. The summer seriously knocked my knitting mojo, and I haven't been interested in it for a while. Or I'd start a project, get a bit through it, and then put it aside, not wanting to to look at it again.

So the first thing I did was to untangle the ends. The mess was in a big chunk the diameter of which was the size of both my hands laid out flat beside each other. It didn't actually take that long to sort out though. I thought I'd just have to cut the ends and throw the chunk away, but it all came untangled in less than an hour. Then I looked at the box.

I was sick of this yarn. I still am, a bit. It's really annoying to me to have yarn with no idea of what it could be used for. Even if it's a vague knitting fantasy dream to be done some time in the far off future, that's still a plan for the yarn, to me. So I picked up a ball, looked at it, and thought, what could possibly be done with this? A scarf? I might not wear it, though. The colours are so not me.

But, I was bored. The bf was playing a video game, and I couldn't think of anything to watch, play, read or anything. So I cast on some stitches, and started knitting a moss stitch rectangle.

It didn't turn out long enough for a scarf, but it was long enough to sew both ends together and make a cowl!!



And I actually like it! It's warm, and the colours look fab with my black winter coat. I used it as my project for the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup, Potions class (something warm to represent the pepper-up potion).

I then went to task with some mustard coloured acrylic that looks like it came straight from the 70s. Heck, it may well have!!




I cast on 30 sts, and knit in 2x2 rib for as long as the yarn lasted. I figured at least I'd be doing something with it. If I didn't like it, well, Christmas is coming up. Or there are plenty charity shops around to donate it to. But I like it! Another thing that will look fab with my black winter coat. And it's super warm, being made out of chunky weight yarn.

It's really surprising to me how these "ugly" yarns turned into something not really that bad. I was all set for throwing them into a charity shop bag, and now I have two scarfs that I will actually wear this winter. Amazing! I've also picked out a pale baby yellow acrylic DK from the box, and have cast on for a pair of 2x2 rib socks on large needles (3mm, large for socks!) It's going fast, and it looks like they'll be a nice warm, thick pair of socks for winter. I'm not sure about the colour, but I'm ignoring that just now. I just need something easy and fast to knit, and like I said, Christmas is coming up (I'm getting a weekly count down from the MIL, lol!)

Now I just need to think of what else to use all those other balls of yarn for!!!