Left Overs

When working with fiber, I find I often have left over odds and ends. After spinning I might have one strand of a color left over when plying. When knitting I might have a little bit of yarn left over from a project. I enjoy using these odds and ends to make something useful.

For example this weekend I completed a skien of yarn from Tehya's fiber (a fading fawn):



After plying two strands of Tehya's yarn together, I had some left over. I certainly didn't want it to go to waste.

Then I dug out these:



Two small balls of one strand remnants.

One of those remnants was a strand spun from Greyt's fiber (a medium rose grey). So I plyed that with the left over strand from Tehya's fiber. This made a 66 yard mini skein:



The other remnant was an older strand spun from Cafe's fiber (she is a beautiful dark fawn, who is no longer on our farm). This made a smaller mini skein of 22 yards:



After plying I washed them and hung them to dry to set the twist.

Aren't they pretty?!



I was struck by how different they look, even though both are plyed with Tehya's fading fawn color, they still take on a different look.



Then I rolled them into balls:





My thought was to take all these small and partial balls of yarn, and knit them into hats. I love putting stripes in hats, and playing around with different color combinations. I thought if I loosely put them in this plastic bag, I can easily see what color balls I have available, so when knitting a hat I can pick and choose what I think will look best together. I already have a good start on my bag of mix matched yarn:



Each hat knit can be it's own puzzle. What fun!!!


By the way, if you wondered, yes, that is a piece of hay on my couch. Doesn't everyone have hay on their couch? I almost reached to grab it out of the way before taking the picture but then I thought it's really our natural couch look so I left it there. The life of an alpaca farmer.