Scrimple Ripple of the Week #15

I’m continuing to work out of the overflowing box of little balls of scrap yarn. A couple of weeks ago I shared how I came up with the Scrandom Ripple Plan. I thought you might like to read about the way I tackled this, my next scrap ripple.

It presented a slightly different challenge; I was starting with twenty-three balls of green scrap yarn! They weighed twenty-six ounces, just two ounces over the twenty-four I need for a child-sized blanket. To make things even more interesting, I added a little ball of fun fur to the pile. Having learned from my experience with fun fur while making Princess, I low-balled my estimate and assumed that I could only make four rows with it. This ripple would be accented by Four Fuzzy Fun Rows!

As before, I wanted to evenly distribute my many yarns throughout the blanket. I think I did it!

Coniferous Noodles*

12,098 stitches – 912,095 donated since Jan. 2011

It seems my mind takes a slightly different route with each scrap ripple. Here’s the way I approached this one:

I realized those four wild rows of fun fur could divide my blanket into five equal sections, like this  -I-I-I-I-  , with the I’s representing the four rows of fun fur, and the hyphens being the sections of all the other yarns mixed together.

What a great idea! This meant I only had to plan seventeen rows, instead of the eighty-four that I laid out using the Scrandom Plan!

84 rows (# of rows in an average child-sized ripple) ÷ 5 sections = 16.8 17 rows per section

Weigh the Yarns

I divided the scrap balls into piles of darks, mediums, lights, whites and teals                    and then weighed each pile:

Medium Greens . . . . 8 ounces                                                                                                               Light Greens  . . . . . . 6 ounces                                                                                                              Whites  . . . . . . . . . . . 6                                                                                                                            Dark Greens  . . . . . . 4                                                                                                                            Teals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Total Weight             26 ounces of regular yarn

Figure Out How Many Rows of Each Color

I can crochet at least three ripple rows from an ounce of regular acrylic yarns, like Red Heart Super Saver, when I use a size H hook… so I multiplied the number of ounces in each color group by three to get the number of rows I would be able to crochet from that group. (example: mediums 8 oz. x 3 = 24 rows)

Then I divided each number of rows by five sections in the blanket.                                       (24 medium rows ÷ 5 = 4, with a remainder of 4)                                                                      None of the answers worked out evenly; each had a remainder, or leftovers.                            I would randomly add in those extra rows, here and there, as I crocheted my Scrimple. I knew they would help me use ever last bit of my scrap yarns!

Mediums 8 oz. x 3 = 24 rows ÷ 5 sections = 4 rows per section, + 4 addt’l rows       Lights       6 oz. . . . . . 18 rows . . . . . . . . . . . .  3 rows . . . . . . . . . . .+ 3 addt’l rows                  Whites      6 oz. . . . . . 18 rows . . . . . . . . . . . .  3 rows . . . . . . . . . . .+ 3 addt’l rows                 Darks        4 oz. . . . . . 12 rows . . . . . . . . . . . .  2 rows . . . . . . . . . . .+ 2 addt’l rows                 Teals          2 oz. . . . . . .6 rows. .  . . . . . . . . . .  1 row . . . . . . . . . . . .+ 1 addt’l row

82 Total Rows =  (65 rows = 5 sections x 13 rows per section)  + 13 addt’l rows + 4 fun fur

Make a Chart

I suppose I could have physically laid out balls of yarn as I planned each section’s color sequence, but instead, I made a little chart. Yes, I do like charts! With this one I was able to keep track of how many rows I’d made of each shade of green by making a check mark after I crocheted each row. I could easily see what color choices remained within the section I was working on:

Once I had filled a column with thirteen check marks, I knew that section was complete and it was time for one row of fun fur!

I arbitrarily chose to casually alternate one-row and two-row stripes. I put the colors in a different order within each of the blanket’s five sections.

Those four fluffy rows of fun fur may have confused you. Without them, this method would have been much simpler! Look at the number of rows I was going to crochet with each of the color groups, (24, 18, 12, and 6); they’re all divisible by six!

That means that, without the fun fur, I could have made Six groups of Thirteen rows each… and had no leftovers to deal with! Ah, did I just hear someone say my blanket would have been too short with only 78 rows? (6 x 13 = 78) Pish, Posh – Easily remedied by grabbing a new skein of yet another green yarn. Yes, it would have been shocking, I agree, but I would have included non-scrap yarn in a scrap ripple! lol.

However… I realize it’s very unusual to have numbers that can be evenly divided, so it’s just as well that I had to figure out how to deal with leftovers (remainders) on my first Scrimple.

I hope my explanation of the Scrimple Plan was clear. Although simpler, in some ways, than the Scrandom Plan, it still takes a few steps to complete. It’s not so much a pattern as an explanation of how I solved the puzzle poised by a particular set of yarns, in this case, twenty-three balls of green!!

* Now, about that name… what can I tell you? It’s what I got when I asked DH for help with a name for this blanket. I have no idea what it means; he just laughs every time he says it out loud!!