In the true sense of a stashing project, I came across the Scrapy Socky Stripey Cardi pattern, which uses up leftover sock yarn you have lying around. I thought this was a really great idea since my attempt to destash these remnants with my Stash Afghan was taking forever.

The colors

My Scrapy Socky Stripey Cardi used five different leftover remnant yarns.

1. The main purple color (Knit Picks Gloss in Cosmos) is from my Simple Purple Socks.
2. The teal yarn (Artyarns Ultramerino 4 in #122) is from Hedera Socks.
3. The green/teal/tan striping yarn (Knit Picks Felici in Schrooner) is from Minty Green Socks.
4. The purple/gray variegated yarn (Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock – Mediumweight in Azurite) is from Queen of Cups Socks.
5. The red color (Sunnyside Ellen Louet Gems Fingering in Cherry Red) is from Dad’s Earl Reds.

The buttons

I still need to find buttons and add the button loops. I’m thinking of using the purple for the loops but haven’t made a final decision. I’ll probably take additional photos once the buttons are applied. Currently, the sweater is blocking.

The sleeves

I love how the sleeves turned out. The pattern calls for two colors to rotate every four rows, but I was running out of the teal and purple/gray colors so I had to knit up both sleeves somewhat at the same time to make sure the remaining yarn split up properly. Then I completed the sleeves once those colors ran out with the purple. I think it gave the sleeves a lot more random effect rather than a rigorous patterning.

The red trim

The red trim ended up being a last-minute decision, and frustration. I didn’t realize how much yarn I really needed (I think the pattern underestimates the yarn requirements for the 24-month size) and quickly ran out of red remnant yarn. But it looked so great I went to exhaustive measures to find enough red yarn to finish the project.

How did I do this? I took out about 8-10 inches of the stash afghan to get to the red stripes! Gasp, I know! Thankfully every red stripe in the afghan actually used two strands of yarn at once so I’d get twice the bang for my buck, but it was still really frustrating watching the afghan backtrack. Thankfully that shouldn’t take too long to fix and all the yarn I took out can still be used since they are perfectly cut lengths of yarn for each stripe.

Stashing progress

I’m now two weeks ahead of schedule with the stash knit down progress! I’m so excited about that since I wanted to be ahead going into the summer when I’m more likely to have a knitting slow down.

stash knit down 2009 total: 11 FOs