Thursday, March 30, 2023

Lucky Day...

 at the charity shop, where there was a bin on the floor with a bit of yarn in it. It was mostly odd balls, partial skeins, and scraps, but there were a few full balls, too. Of course, I had a rummage around and found some that wanted to come live with me.
orphan yarn no more--she only asked for a euro

I know the multicoloured partial skein with the green in it is acrylic. I like the colours and know how I am going to use it. I have a large pin loom project on the go and I am curious to see how it will look doubled up and woven on my loom. And it's the right weight to use single stranded on my heart loom, so I might make a heart or two, too!
The small grey partial skein looked like Donegal tweed wool. The fuzzy blue with the blobs seemed to be at least mostly mohair. I did the burn test when I got home and right on both counts--yay! I'm not sure yet how I will use these, but I'm sure they will be right at home in a future scrappy project.


I could tell what the last bit is because there are a few full balls with label, as well as the ball and a bit more. All in all, I think there are at least 4 full balls here. It's 46% mohair, 44% cotton, and 10% nylon. I know how I'm going to use that, too--also with my pin loom. Last fall, a friend gave me a sweater made by his late wife and asked me if I could deconstruct it and reuse the yarn. I said I could. Because I wanted to preserve some of her work, I removed the sleeves and made a bag out of one of them. 
The burn test indicates that this yarn is also mostly mohair. I unraveled the body of the sweater and used the yarn to weave squares on my pin loom. The mohair/cotton blend I got today contains both of these colours, and some slubs like this, too, so it will work together nicely. I will use it to weave more squares. Funnily enough, I have been thinking about this project for several days now. I have 8 hanks of purple wool that another friend brought back for me from a thrift store in Boston last autumn. My plan was to combine the pin loom squares I have with crochet in the purple yarn to make a jacket. I've been trying to decide how I was going to construct that, but have been going back and forth, bouncing around between different ideas. Now I'm glad I was so indecisive, because I'll have a bunch more squares with my new yarn to incorporate. 

I'm thrilled at my little orphan yarn haul and surprised that I found a bunch of yarn that works so well in my work-in-progress. 

7 comments:

Linda said...

Great finds. I can wait to see the final projects.

Love the purse Shari. Not only is it fun but it honors the work put in by the previous artisan.

Lowcarb team member said...

It certainly was your lucky day, what a great lot of yarn :)

All the best Jan

Shari Burke said...

I do love working with orphan yarn/odd balls/scraps :-)

Vicki said...

That was sure a great deal. All the yarn is pretty, expecially the bottom right. I hope you post a photo of what all you make with the different yarns. I love the bag, you sure have a great imagination.

Shari Burke said...

Thanks, Vicki! I will post a photo. I wove some squares last night with the mohair/cotton and they will work well with the squares I already have and the purple wool. Now that I have this new yarn and know about how many squares I will get from it, I know how I will proceed with that project--yay!

Rostrose said...

Great, dear Shari,
these are wonderful yarns - nothing stands in the way of creative times!
Happy Easter 🐣🐰🪺!
All the best, Traude
https://rostrose.blogspot.com/2023/04/ruckschau-auf-den-marz-2023.html

Shari Burke said...

Orphan yarn takes me to my happy place :-) I like the process of figuring out what I will do with it, creating with it, and then using the end result, especially knowing I'm keeping it out of landfill!