ScrapHappy Day : yarn as scraps?

One of the great things about participating in a stitch-a-long is that you meet a lot of other crafty folk, and then you meet their networks, and so on. I noticed that some people in my stitch-a-long take part in a "ScrapHappy Day" -- a day to show the projects you make from scraps -- and that I even knew the organizers!

A lot of my fellow stitchers are also quilters, and while I have quilted, I haven't made time to do it lately. So I didn't think I really had anything to show. And then I wondered, would leftover yarn be considered "scraps"?

Well, yes. Yes I say. And it's a lot of yarn.

How might someone end up with quite so much scrap yarn? Well, it's like this.

In 2017 I made a temperature afghan using "15 shades of grey" -- 15 shades, from black to white, reflecting different temperatures. A lot of people do their temperature afghans with a rainbow motif -- not my style -- or with 8 colors. Not me -- I went to the fabric store and pulled the largest range of black to white I could. It remains one of my all-time favorite craft projects. Here's the end of January, in the cold, dark winter:

Here's a few months in, when I realized it was going to be massive.

And here's the end of August, when I realized this massive blanket was going to be too long for a bed (but my cat didn't care).

The problem with a temperature afghan is that you don't know in advance how much of any particular yarn you're going to need. Because I wanted a greyscale afghan, I had to use multiple yarn brands ... thus increasing the chance that any one might go out of stock/production during the year. I bought one skein of each and when I ran out, bought an additional skein. In one case I managed to get the last skein listed on the Jo-Ann website in Western Washington -- and had to drive 15 miles to go get it.

But for the most part, I had extra yarn. We only topped 90 degrees F 3 days in 2017, and never topped 95, so the skein for "Elephant" was barely touched, and the white skein was untouched. Other colors were replaced late in the year, and were mostly full, too. So what to do?

While I loved the temperature afghan, the last thing I needed was ANOTHER TEMPERATURE AFGHAN. So the yarn went back into a box and into the basement.

At some point in 2019 I saw this pattern for a Rainbow Stained Glass Blanket by Pat Foster online and thought, "Oh! This might be DESIGNED to use up leftover temperature afghan yarn!:

I decided that, rather than use grey "leading" and a rainbow, I'd use black yarn leftover from this and other projects and fill in the "windows" with my shades of grey. And it's PERFECT:

Sadly the photos don't really show the different shades -- I blame the light-correction on the iPhone trying too hard! But hopefully you can see that the colors start with a very dark charcoal and are now at a medium grey.

My plans are to use up as much of the scrap yarn as I can by crocheting each color three times -- or as yarn allows. Given that I don't make a ton of time to crochet, I'm pleased with my progress so far. And it feels great to work on a project that didn't require new supplies!

ScrapHappy Day is organized by Kate and Gun, so if you're interested in participating please see their blogs. And why not check out what all the other scraptacular folks have been making out of their scraps?

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Nanette, Lynn, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Debbierose, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean, Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Connie, Bekki, Pauline, and Sue L.

I'll be back on the 15th of February, hopefully showing off more progress!