When a Dite Will Do Ya

As I was working on this gorgeous Louisa Harding handbag, I dipped into my stash 3 times for contrasting yarn. Since I'm using her hand-dyed Grace (silk & wool), I wanted to use equally fine yarns for the embellishing. The red flowers are from some left over Silk Alpaca, and the pale blue is left over hand-dyed Grace from my February Lady Sweater. As I was rifling through all my stuff (and I do have more than most of you reading this...even though your stashes are no doubt significant!), it occurred to me that it would be helpful to have a basket full of remnants in the shop for when just a dite will do ya.

While I wound these remnants into tidy balls, priced, and labeled them with as much information as I had, I came up with all sorts of ideas to use them: to knit contrasting toes or heels on socks, to fringe a scarf, to make tiny amurgami animals, or to embroider faces on kittens.

Here, I'm using a Tahki Stacy Charles red boucle to do Cozy Kitten's ears.
Although Cozy Kitten looks more like a hot water bottle cover than anything else, within the next few days, you will see kitty come to life with embellishment and stuffing!

Since embellishment is such a part of knitting and crocheting these days, tomorrow I will be in L.A. at the textile show searching for handbag handles, closures, more buttons and other decorative items. Looking forward to sharing the news with you upon my return!