Last year I really embraced stripes in my knitting. They're colourful and bright, and, most importantly from my point of view, they help use up the odds and ends of leftover yarns acquired over the years.
This first one (above), a wool cardigan, is a bit of a cheat as I bought some balls of the brown yarn to pull the other colours together and to be sure I had enough for the button edging, but I think it's worked really well, and helped use up a variety of yarns.
Next was a cotton v-neck jumper. I'm not actually a great fan of cotton yarn - garments tend to be heavy and take forever to dry - but I've still accumulated a store of it which needed using up. There were a lot of odd balls which accounts for the random narrower stripes and the weird colour change from blues/greens to red/orange but I think overall it's worked, and is baggy enough to wear over a warm dress.
Last, and in a way the least, was a really random project using up all sorts of colours to make this short-sleeved jumper. I'd hoped to be able to alternate large and narrower stripes, but as I progressed it became obvious that in some of the yarns I just didn't have enough. Also, I didn't really want to have a white stripe as it feels too startling at the side of the more muted colours. As a garment though it's growing on me - and at least no one knows that it wasn't intended to look this way.
Something that really puzzles me though is - if I've knitted up all these oddments of yarn, why doesn't there appear to be more space in the storage drawers? In the hope of one day making some space, I've started my next project - a long cardigan, and yes, it's striped!
