Making "Yarn"

As I was perusing Ravelry.com, I saw an interesting "rag" bag that I thought was kinda nifty. It involved using scrap fabric as yarn.

I have an insane amount of scrap fabric from all my sewing, so I started making "yarn".

It was relatively easy although it takes a bit of time. There's two methods:
1) a quasi- continuous bias method using a tube of fabric. This works for a square-ish piece of fabric that is at least 4-5 inches big.
-- The square fabric is sewn into a tube. Turn right-side out
-- Cut 1/2" squares, stopping about 1" from the seam
-- Cut one of the end "strips" at an angle
-- Cut the rest of the strips diagonally across the seam.
This results in a somewhat continuous strip of fabric.

2) cut out strips for long, skinny pieces of fabric. Cut them either 1-2" depending on the size, then cut those in half until you get 1/2" pieces.

Pieces of "yarn" are strung together by making slits at the end of each piece, then using those to tie / knot the pieces to each other.

From the left over scraps of a duster, I managed to get about 4 yards of yarn. Most of the straps were long skinny pieces (thanks to long pattern panels), but the quasi-continuous method worked well on small square pieces as well.

I also tackled a few pieces from the ren faire outfits I made, and also managed about 2-3 yards of "yarn" from the goldenrod fabric.

Since my scrap bin is somewhat full, it'll take me a bit of time to go through, but it'll be something I'll do while watching videos or somesuch....or if I find myself with time to spare

Tabby Colors

Last night, I was balling up some skeins of yarn for a 'mindless' shawl project that I'll eventually start working on...probably after the lasik, because it doesn't require any counting or anything fancy ..once I finish the first two rows, it's work it until it's long enough.

And, it'll give me something to do when I can't focus on anything else. It's a yarn I bought online at a pretty decent price, and it's a lovely color. However, after closer inspection, I realized there were three diffferent color lots within the 12 skeins sent to me -- 4 skeins in each of the 3 different color lots. DOH! The coloration is every-so-slightly off from each other, but enough to notice. I had told the woman I was purchasing from that this was for a single project, but apparently did not request the same color lot. *sigh*

The coloration is almost the same, but one lot is slightly more "orange" and another a little more "green". But I figure I can interweave each of the 3 color lots so that it shouldn't be all that noticeable?

While I was making the balls, I noticed a cat watching me intently. Normally, the cats don't play with the yarn at all, but I think she was fascinated with the movement of the yarn from the skein.

Then, I noticed, that this particular skein was pretty damn close to said cat's coloring. I held it up to make sure. Ayup...same coloration -- more orangey. Then I took a skein from another color lot and held it up to her sister...and wouldn't you know it? It's the same coloration -- this time, more green undertones.

I took the a skein from the last color lot; it somewhat matches Kayo's coloration (from the fur I have).

DH laughed at me.

It was totally unintentional. I preferred this particular color schema over everything else. Of course, my couch is also of tabby-coloration (the first time the cats sat on the sofa, it was uncanny how well they blended into it). So, obviously, I have some sort of innate preference for tabby colored-things. Oy...go figure.

Thusly, this project will be thus dubbed the "Tabby Shawl".