Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Little Lovey

There has been some discussion over on the Ravelry group about this fabulous pattern for the Zig and Zag Sock Yarn Pram Blanket by Debbie Orr and what my pal Blogless Carla has been doing.




It all started at knitting guild last month. May is our annual yarn garage sale, and I was thinking of getting rid of a big bag of Sophie's Toes scraps that was clogging up my closet.


I'm sure you have heard the joke of the quilter who dies and the family finds a box of scraps in the attic labeled: "Scraps Too Small to Save". Well, it was like that. I had an overflowing bag of yarn scraps--pieces too small to make booties, too small to put in Magic balls, too small to even make Barn Raising squares. But they were just so dang pretty. I really hated to throw them in the trash. I wondered if some clever individual could think of something.


But I hesitated, because I didn't want to bring a bunch of crap that nobody wanted to guild, and be embarrassed. But the were so dang pretty. So I organized them loosely by color, shoved them into ziplocs and weighed them so they were roughly 200 gms each, and brought them to guild. I had no idea of the price. (Or if anyone would want them.)




I sat down with a bunch of friends at guild, and started to unload them and ask my friends advice about the price, and people started grabbing them up right away! I had 7 of the 10 bags spoken for before I could even get them over to the sale table!

Discussion ensued: they were pretty! But what would you actually do with them?!


Right then, in a serendipitous moment, another friend happened to walk by and see Blogless Carla oohing over her scraps and said right away: you could make the Zig Zag Pram Blanket! So Carla looked it up on Ravelry that night, cast on with her ziploc of blues and greens with a little pink thrown in, and was hooked!





She finished it in less than a week. She used a separate ball (Sophie's Toes, color: Downtown) for the border, because she wanted the border to be all the same color, and she wasn't sure that she had a scrap ball big enough for the border. Apparently you weave the ends in as you go, so it isn't such a chore at the end. It weighs 150 gms total and measures 20" wide by 27" long. It is a little blankie-but just perfect for a little lovey.

I know it must be a fun knit, because she cast on another one right away!


The second blanket is made with a Sophie's Toes Magic Ball. (Color: Pastel Baby). She wanted to make a bigger one than the first, so she added 2 repeats to make it wider, and added more scraps to make it longer. FYI the Magic Ball will just make the smaller version (150 gms).

I believe that the original pattern has 9 repeats and the bigger blankie has 11. It measures 24" wide by 31" long.

Big thank you to Carla for letting me show off her beautiful creations! And for even more Zigzag blankie love, check out Paulacrowe's blankie on Ravelry!