Ruffle Yarns: More than just scarves

Ruffle yarns, like Red Heart's Sashay yarn, have been really popular lately. It takes a while to get used to working with the yarn, but once you do, it's fun to work with. The first project I made with it was a scarf. It seemed like most people were making scarves with it. I have been wondering what else could be made with this yarn for a while now. In a recent issue of Crochet! magazine, there was a pattern for a ruffle clutch/purse. I decided that I had to see how it would work.

Initially the bag starts with just using one stand of regular worsted weight yarn. To get the ruffles, the sides of the bag are worked with the ruffle yarn AND the worsted weight yarn together. This took me a while to get used to, and I'm still a little slow at it, but I really like how it worked. The sides are pretty dense and thick because of the two yarns.

 

Work in progress:
 

The completed project:

The final project used two skeins of ruffle yarn and one skein of a main color. This project has me thinking of so many other things that could be made with ruffle yarns. For example, a decorative pillow would get some added softness with the yarn. (Though the yarn may snag on earrings or jewelry or anything else. Not to mention that my puppies would love to chew on it. However, that's just the nature of the ruffle yarns.) This pattern could easily inspire additional bag/purse projects with less (or even more) ruffles.

Look for a class on Ruffle Yarns if you'd like additional help with working with these specialty yarns.

Resourceful crochet materials

I read a post on Facebook a few days ago that mentioned how small local yarn stores thought crocheters were cheap because they didn't want to pay for the expensive yarns to keep them in business for long. That got me to thinking... Am I cheap? Sure, I may loathe the idea of spending a ton of money on yarn, but it's only because I already spend a bunch each year to maintain my stash. Of course this also depends on what I'm making. A sweater that I'd intend to wear demands more than the cheaper, rough acrylic yarns. I'll spend the extra few dollars to get the softer yarns.

All this thinking eventually lead me to looking into the things that people crochet with. I've found patterns from people who crochet with plastic bags (plarn), old clothes or pop can tabs and so much more. I suppose that's one of the wonderful things about crochet. You can use just about anything that can be cut into strips. Maybe this just follows the eco-friendly mindset of so many people, but I would hardly say that crocheters are cheap - just resourceful with their craft.

I have yet to dabble into this side of crochet, but I'm tempted to do so. I've started saving plastic bags a while ago and now they just take up space. Why not put them to good use? The weirdest thing, if you want to call it weird, that I've crocheted with thus far has been wire. After getting used to working with the wire it was actually fun to see what kinds of things I could make. I'm excited to try out these new materials and possibly search for additional things. I wonder what else I have lying around my house that I could crochet with...

What is the craziest material you've crocheted with?