Stash Busting

I thought a post about stash busting was fitting for this months theme. I'll be honest, I haven't done a lot of it. In all honesty, I throw out most of my scrap yarns. I generally use up most of them so when I say scrap I literally mean scrap. The only scrap yarns I don't throw out are my leftover sock yarns. When knitting socks for my sister that tends to be a rather large amount.

If you followed my blog as far back as 2012 you may recognise where this all started. I had rather a sizable collection of leftover yarn already. We then came up with the idea of an 'odds and ends' challenge with the knitting group. The idea being that your make had to be entirely from leftovers. Hence, a granny square cushion. That first one was actually my second which I made for my gran a few Christmas's ago.

This is one which I originally made for myself. I still love it. I also still have dozens of these squares and I haven't done anything with them. Not to mention my growing collection of leftover sock yarn.

This, believe it or not, is a twiddle muff. It's made up of scrap yarns, buttons and bells and pom poms. The point of them is to help people with dementia. A lot of people with dementia will try to do things with their hands such as tear up tissues. This gives them something to hold onto with a lot of items on there which are good for sensory purposes. You can find the pattern here. My old knitting group started this. A lady I worked with had asked me to bring one in for her mum which the knitting group ladies kindly donated. I have since heard that the ladies mum loves it and finds it very calming. The rest of the nursing home liked it too. So much so that they are now collecting scrap yarn so that they can make some of their own. That's all it takes, some scrap yarn. The more colours that are in there the better. I sent a bag of scrap yarn last week so in a way it has helped me organise my stash.

Another from the knitting group. These are bags made by the ladies for the Beatson. When my mum was a patient there they gave her a bag to carry around her syringe driver. My mum found this very useful as it made it easier for her to get around. I gave Helen the bag after my mum passed away so that the knitting group would have a pattern to base theirs own. Once a bag is give to someone it's theirs due to infection control. So they always need them. The ladies have made over 70 of them and used some lovely fabrics. Fittingly, my mum's bag was red but I am sure she would have liked the ones the knitting group made.

So just some ideas for stash busting. These are just a few of the things that I have done or the knitting group have don. On Friday though I will have a pinterest post based around this, so hopefully you will see something that you might find appealing.