a simple yarn

Apart from the title, where ‘cheap’ is not necessarily always a good adjective to use, and the eternally perky-there-could-be-an-issue-with-caffeine-and-we-need-to-do-an-intervention photo of the author wearing a garment in which she is in imminent danger of having her head swallowed by the size of the cowl but thankfully the amount of hairspray will keep it all in place, although I’m sure she’s a very nice person, and the fact that this tome is no longer in print and I’m almost done with my run-on sentence…..it’s a pretty neat book.

The last time I had thoughts of economy, I bought this book from a second hand bookshop. It certainly has some interesting recipes in it claiming cheaper-ness and better-ness such as how to make Bisquik and the equivalent of store-bought salad dressings, face cleaners, furniture polish and cold remedies.

Ah, cold remedies….I made the cough syrup from this book of cheaply better recipes and gave it to Three-Year-Old-At-The-Time-Daughter-Kate. She still has an intense-aversion-to-and-nigh-unto-shoulder-shuddering-hatred-for honey, six years after the fact. I think it was the cooked onions along with that honey which put her off. Understandable.

On the other hand I have to say there have been some winners, like homemade lip balm. Surprisingly easy, adding whatever flavour/smell of food-safe ‘essence of’ oil to make a personalised lip protector. Love that.

And so, in the spirit of thrift and excellence, I stumbled onto this:

A chenille bath squidgy thing for sale at The Body Shop. Taking a closer look, much to Daughter-Kate’s immense embarrassment and to the increasing curiosity of the security-guy-at-the-door-pondering-whether-I-was-trying-to-nick-it, I took a Bondesque photo with the spy camera on the mobile phone.

Now, I’m not adept at ‘I see how that’s made and can do it at home.’ I generally need a pattern to follow from someone else who’s cracked the code. But even this was simple enough to decipher. Chenille yarn. Got that. Pattern for Curley Wurley scarf. Got that. And evening’s worth of time. Well……don’t quite have that because the list of projects is growing exponentially, but……okay, I’ll give one evening to this impulse item.

Voila! It worked!

Wanna make one too?
I took chenille yarn and US 10-1/2 size needles (that’s 6.5mm). Cast on 30 stitches.
Row 1—Knit
Row 2—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1.
Row 3—Knit
Row 4—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1.
Row 5—Knit
Row 6—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1. (It’s gonna get tightish, go carefully, you’ll get it)
Row 7—Knit
Row 8—Cast off.

If you want a bigger squidgy-thing, then perhaps you may want to add a row of knit in between the increased rows? Just a thought….

And now you’ve got a mini-Curley-Wurley scarf. Make a second one. Below are pics of how I put it together, with the assistance of Helpful-Hand-Model-Holly. But, if you find a better way, by all means do it! It’s a prototype and so all disclaimers apply…

Take one of the ‘mini scarves’ and fold in half along the long side.

Stitch it together on the ‘non-curley’ side.

You could do an ‘in and out’ stitch or whipstitch it.

Do the same with the second ‘mini scarf’ and then stitch the two pieces together.

Take a bit of string for the hanger (in the photo I used the left over chenille, but I think I’d use string next time). Run a gathering type of stitch to bring one end of the toward the other end. Use the extra bit of string for the hanger.

Handmade chenille bath squidgy. Cheaper and better.