My adventures in tarn.

Hi there. Wow, this week has really flown.  I have been putting off getting on the computer, as I have nothing much to report really, life has been humming along with all the usual good and bad stuff.  I have been pondering on the unfairness of life, how random our 'luck' seems to be, sometimes it is very hard to find the silver lining on all the crappy things that happen out there.  There seems to have been a lot of bizarre, terrible news happening out in the big wide world, it makes me wonder where we are heading as a society.  I'd like to think somewhere calm and enlightened and embracing, but I do wonder.  There have also been moments a lot closer to home where I have been forced to contemplate the randomness of good health. One day it is there, and seemingly the next it has dissolved before your eyes.  I have been sending lots of positive vibes to my extended family, everything is crossed and heres hoping for a great recovery.

As an antidote to all this kind of sad thinking, I decided to try something a bit new on the crafty front.  

I have to say, I spend a fair amount of time trawling Pinterest, and I do come across a lot of gems. 

A couple of weeks ago I found a great tutorial on how to make T-shirt yarn (tarn) for crocheting.  Yes please!  It was super easy, so on the weekend I had a go.  

I couldn't find any t-shirts around our house that were in colours I liked for crocheting, so I bought some cotton jersey from Spotlight, sewed it into long tubes and pretended it came from a t-shirt.(completely disregarded the thrifty, recycling element of this project).

......here is the green jersey all cut up waiting to be stretched....

.......and here are the finished piles of tarn waiting to be wound into balls.......

.........and here are the nice neat balls of tarn waiting to be crocheted into something fab!

I bought 1 metre each of 5 colours and was hoping to have enough tarn 

to hook up a 6 granny square bathmat.

Well, that wasn't to be.  

1 metre of fabric made about 42m of tarn, and I was quite alarmed at the rapid rate of consumption while hooking up the granny squares.  These squares really ate up the tarn!!

I  had just enough to make 4 squares with 1 colour left for a row of border.  I was hoping for 6 squares, but I guess 4 will have to do. Next time I will cut up 2 metres of each fabric, I need a much bigger ball of tarn!

Anyway, here is how it worked out, my slightly wonky bathmat. Tadah!

It is hard to tell how chunky and heavy it is from this photo, but it does feel very nice to walk on in bare feet.  And I guess it is nearly big enough, the granny squares are pretty huge!!  

This was a fun, frivolous project, and now I have a bathmat that ended up costing a lot more than if I had just bought one, but I don't know where I would have found a chunky, crocheted, granny square, tarn mat!  So I have a fairly unique bit of whimsy there!

Have you ever made anything from t-shirt yarn?  

Did your arms get sore? (mine did a little bit!)

Did you like using the huge hook? I used a 10mm hook, although I think I could have used a bigger one.

Well that's about all my tarning adventures for now.  If I find a better supply of fabric I might just dip my toe back in the tarn waters again, it was a fun side track to follow!

 Have a lovely day, wherever you are!

xxxxxxx