Recycling Old Candles

Since I have been on a candle making kick for quite some time I have built up an enormous supply of wax bits all over the house.

Some of the larger candles simply fizzled out because I didn’t use the proper wick or should have used two. I should have researched the wick thing more thoroughly but at the time I was excited and wanted to get going on the hobby.

How to get the wax out of the container?

If you have a small amount of wax in a container, run it under the hot water tap to loosen it up. Then hook onto it with a butter knife and it should slide out eventually. If the opening is too narrow first you will have to cut the wax into a few pieces.

If it’s a larger container of wax or won’t come out that easily, you can use a double boiler and melt the container in there until the wax liquefies. Once you get a few colors mixed together it might not be a pretty sight. If you have nothing against black that would be the easiest color to dye them.

Once you have all your wax together you just proceed as you normally would in making candles, paying attention not to overheat the wax in the double boiler. Most wax should not be heated above 200 degrees farenheit but some have even lower flash points.

Another fun way to use up different colored candle wax is by creating ice candles. Some people also save their old tealight containers to create new ones or fire starters.

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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