Putting All My Spinning in One Basket

My Growing Pile of Homespun

My spinning and dyeing is coming along nicely.  I am still a long way from where I would like to be but that is always the way when you are impatient to learn a new skill.

Along the way, I have accumulated quite a bit of variously dyed spun yarn in a range of skill levels that left me wondering what on earth I was going to do with it all? 

I am going to take quite a bit over to Melbourne with me for Deb to weave with but I need to make sure that the wool will have the strength to stay together and that the lumpy bits will fit through the weft of the loom.  I'm not sure that my spinning is quite up to that yet .. 

I sat looking at the growing pile for quite some time until I worked out what I was going to do with it.  I wanted something that knits (or crochets) very quickly as I did not want to spend evening after evening working on something that may not give me the end results that I desired.

Getting all the wool ready for stripes.

I found my Pinspiration from Pinterest.  A beautiful basketweave blanket using scrap wool.  Perfect!  It comes from a lovely blog "Keeping it Stepford" and I loved all the colours.    Maria uses up a lot of her wool by using 3 different yarns at once.  I tried just 2 yarns but that was still too thick even using a 10.00mm crochet hook. More evidence that my spinning has a long way to go.  So, I decided to make a stripy  scrap blanket with all my homespun plus a few balls of yarn from my stash to help it along.

I found a great tutorial for the basketweave stitch at All Free Crochet.  As knitting is my first love, I am always a bit unsure when it comes to new crochet stitches but this one is very easy.  I am sure it will crochet up in next to no time.  My son has put his hand up to have it once it's finished - we'll see how that goes.  He doesn't strike me as a 'scrap blanket' type of person, but you never know.  

I am happy that my homespun will become something functional and practical.  Fingers crossed for pretty as well.

Happy Crocheting,

Louise

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