http://upislandeggs.com/magicball.html
Some time back, I had written a bit about crochet using a Magic Ball. I love the idea of creating and using a Magic Ball. If you aren’t familiar with the term, you’re in for a treat! A Magic Ball is simply one you create by tying together all your odd lengths of leftover yarns. You can either make the ball totally random, combining differing weights, fibers, and lengths of yarn. A more practical approach to creating a Magic Ball would be to combine lengths of related yarns – either all the same fiber or the same weight. If you happen to crochet a lot of socks, it would make sense to build yourself a Magic Ball of all the leftover sock yarns you accrue. If you have a penchant for babyghans in acrylic yarns, make a Magic Ball using only those strands. A potholder fan? It’s a cotton Magic Ball for you.
I’ve rounded up a few examples of Magic Balls and what you can do with them. Enjoy!
This beauty is a rug made entirely of cotton scrap yarn.
Magic Ball Afghans
This blog gives all the ‘rules’ that turned out these two beautiful scrap afghans. I am particularly fond of these pretty afghans since they show us how to make good use of those left over novelty yarns we all have stashed somewhere in a bin or basket.
There might even be a way to make a little money with your yarn scraps! This creatively designed purse shows how a good eye for color and design can turn one into a bona fide designer! It’s for sale on etsy.com and can be seen here .
And, just when you thought you had seen every iteration of Magic Ball Crochet, you come across real Magic Ball Crochet – LOL. Who’s gonna crochet me some of these?? You can see these and some even more interesting looking ones here .
Magic Balls
Stay tuned here for more on Magic Ball Crochet coming up soon.
This is a really cool sweater and technique~ Thanks for the idea! I wonder if it would work with acrylics? ???
Hi! I’m just getting back into crochet. I used to do it long ago, but got out of it because it seemed like I was hurting my hands. Anyway, I’ve been seeing some things about Magic Ball crochet and didn’t know what it was until now. Seems interesting. I think I’ll try it. I also noticed that you mentioned you have an etsy store. I just started one and am trying to learn how to promote it. I bought a book by a man named Tim Adam of Tim Adam Designs. Its all about how to sell on etsy. Have you heard of him? I really like the book because I’m learning a lot. One of the things he said was that blogging would help me promote my etsy store, but although I have heard of blogging, I never really got into either reading or writing blogs until now so I’m a total blogging newbie. What a huge learning curve I have to overcome. Don’t hardly know where to begin. I think I will begin first of all by starting to follow your blog. My etsy shop is kdmarsh1. I don’t have much on sale yet. I’m working on trying to up my inventory. Would you visit my shop when you have time and let me know what you think?
Thanks so much for this post about Magic Ball crocheting — it really is an awesome technique, and a great way to make sure you’re not wasting any yarn. 🙂
I joke that I’m a Native American of yarn — none goes to waste! If I don’t have enough of a skein for a project, I’ll crochet flowers. If I don’t have enough for flowers, I use it for magic ball. If I have less than a foot, I save it to stuff amigurumi. Especially in this economic downturn, it’s imperative to make the most of all your yarn!
I really appreciate your kind comments about my magic ball bag, and for linking to my Etsy shop. It made my day to find this post!