Zero Waste

Hi, I'm Mary Beth Temple. And if you're anything like me, you have so much scrap yarn laying around, it's too small to really do anything with, but it's too big to throw away before it buries you. Let me show you a technique that I like to use to use it all up. We call, we used to call these magic balls back in the day. I don't know if people use that terminology anymore.

But what I do is I take my scraps and I knot them together. I'm gonna show you how and then I'm going to go ahead and crochet my project and however the yarn comes up, it comes up however wide or narrow or long or short. The color block is, that's ok with me because I'm just using up my scraps. So to get my magic ball started, I'm going to grab, let's see, let's do the blue. So I have my light blue here and I have my dark blue here.

I'm gonna let them overlap by a couple of inches. I'm going to take the light blue and tie an overhand. Not that is including the dark blue that encloses the dark blue and I'm going to close it, but I'm not gonna pull it super tight yet. Then I'm going to take my dark blue and I'm going to tie an overhand knot that includes, or encloses the light blue and I'm gonna close it up, but I'm not gonna pull it super tight yet. It's too soon.

Now, I'm going to pull until these two knots are very close together. Now, I'm going to tighten up. Not one, I'm going to tighten up knot too and I'm gonna pull, pull, pull like a maniac until those two knots are right on top of each other. I don't know if you can tell how much stress I'm putting on these yarns, but I have my whole body weight on here trying to pull it apart and it will not come. Now, you have two options at this point.

One is, you can leave these little tails out as part of your project, maybe brush them out and they look like little tassels and that's totally fine. Alternatively, you can go ahead and trim them pretty close because that knot is not coming out. So then all I do is wind it onto my ball and get ready for the next color. So let's do that one more time just so you can see how it works. Um Let's try the coral.

So I'm going to over my lap my yarns by a couple of inches. I'm going to take my dark blue and I'm going to tie an overhand knot in closing the coral and I'm gonna close it up but not too tight. Now, I'm going to take my coral and I'm going to tie an overhand knot around my dark blue and close it up but not too tight. Now, I'm going to pull the two strands so the knots are pretty close to each other. Tighten up, knot, one, tighten up knot to pull the two strands.

So the knots are right up on top of each other and you double checking to make sure you haven't made a mistake and nothing's gonna come undone. And then once again, you can leave the tassels or you can trim them pretty close and then wind that on to your ball. So when I have lots of extra Scrps like this, I go ahead and just make a magic ball and then when I'm ready to crochet a project, I have something interesting to work in. And when I'm crocheting, if you look right here, here's where one of the knots is. I'm just gonna crochet along living my life.

OK. The knots coming up, I can feel it and I'm just gonna let it be wherever it is, wherever it lands is. Ok with me, that's where that next stitch is going to be. I do like to keep my weights together. I like my worsted weight with my worst weight and my fingering weight with my fingering weight, et cetera.

But I also think if you're working on something and uh you're a little more artistically minded than I am, you can really make some interesting fabric by having a lot of control over where those colors are placed and in what order. So I hope you had fun making your very own magic ball and using up all your little scraps.