Twist

When I was little, my mom sewed clothing for my sister and me, usually a matching pair of dresses in the same fabric. Scraps from those calico dresses would be passed to my grandma, who worked them all by hand into a full size cathedral window quilt. Today the dresses are long gone, but the quilt hangs over the banister at my mom’s, where we can look at the pieces and remember.

This month, using a Judith Shangold sweater pattern, I set out to use up some of the scraps of yarn in the City Knitting yarn stash in the back room. I bought a few fine mohairs to hold with the leaner yarns, so I could use just about everything- chunky to fingering weight. By holding some yarns single and combining others, I came up with enough combinations from 50 mini-balls of yarn to make this.

All in all, a very fun, quick knit with warm results.

All in garter stitch. All stripes formed from knitting two rows of a random choice before moving to the next.

I reduced many fair sized skeins to teeny little balls like these.

In making it, I got to relive some fine memories from life at the shop over the past couple years. I’ll share just one. One of my sweater stripes is made from the same furry yarn David W. used to knit a bear to give away. This bear’s round rear end, formed by some clever short row shaping, gave us some laughs that week. We couldn’t resist asking David to show his bear bottom to everyone. (Funnier in the hearing than in the reading.)