I’m stash busting: going through my yarn stash and using it up (so I can spin more yarn). I had a skein of machine lace in red metallic with a pattern on the label. I thought, hey! this will be a quick project.

I have crocheted a scarf from machine lace before, and I forgot that I said never again. Which is why the skein was unused in my stash. The idea is that you crochet or knit just the top two strands of lace, and the rest ruffles out. I’m not usually a ruffle person, but it really does make a striking scarf. But oh is that lace fiddly! I decided to pick up 10 stitches and was very careful to pick up the next loop on the lace for each stitch. Wrong. I wasn’t getting any ruffles and it was taking forever. So I took a breath, beat my OCD down with a stick, and stuck my needle in just any ol’ where. (Yes, I exaggerate, I did pick up lace at measured intervals, but because they were not always in the next loop, the ruffle effect happened.) Because I was doing a 10 stitch repeat (and turning the work in the same direction each time), I ended up with a sort of flat spiral. To maximize ruffle, I gave the whole thing a couple of twists and connected the ends to make an infinity scarf. I was much more pleased with the final result than I expected!