Tying up Loose Ends

For my latest pattern, that's exactly what I've been doing - tying up loose ends. Please tell me I'm not the only one who regularly finds this when going in search of a particular colour of yarn ...

My large collection of Stylecraft Special DK in particular, often ends up like this. At least it did until I took it firmly in hand and wound it all into cakes (but that's a story for another day).

When I'm looking for a colour, I can never be bothered to tease out the ball I want and often resort to pulling a big chunk out and then cutting it off which, of course, leads to more mess and confusion further down the line.

Anyway, I decided it was time to do something about this so I set to and untangled it all; I have 92 shades of this yarn so you can just imagine how long it took. I ended up with a pile of leftover lengths of yarn, most of which weighed less than 10g. Now normally I'd be tempted to throw these away as they'd be the ones that would unwind and tangle themselves up the easiest. There were an awful lot of them though.

This little lot weighed 97g - that's nearly a whole ball of yarn - so I decided to make use of them. After lots of cutting and knotting lengths together, I ended up with this.

This ball of loose ends used less than half of the yarn; isn't it pretty? I quickly learnt to wind the yarn into a ball as I went though. All those knots wrap themselves round each other, leaving you back where you started, untangling a mess.

From that first ball of loose ends, I knitted this little pouch which is about 10 cm / 4"². It's lined with fabric to hide all those knots which gives it a bit of body.

My favourite thing about this little pouch though is that you can button it up in three different ways. There are four buttons and four buttonholes which can be buttoned straight as in the picture above, sideways to give you a humbug shape ...

... or (and I really like this one), so that the top forms a cross on the top ...

I know, I can never do things the obvious way, can I? Here's another photo showing the top of the pouch.

Apart from liking it just because it's different, this way of buttoning leaves a little hole in the middle which is just right for your knitting yarn to come through while the ball is held safely in the pouch.

Yes, that's a different pouch in that picture. I knitted three different sizes before I got bored; instructions for all three are in the pattern. As normal, you can download Loose Ends Pouches free of charge from my ravelry shop.

I suspect that there will be more 'using up oddments of yarn' patterns coming from me in the future as I try to corral my stash into some sort of useable order. In the meantime, I've still got some of those original loose ends left to play with. What shall I make?