Leftovers

First off – after six months of buying no clothes, I may have to break the run to buy myself some thermal underwear – either that, or stay in the house until Spring. It's so cold in Melbourne at the moment. I'm currently trying to rationalise this decision by convincing myself I'll use less electricity wearing my thermals...

Anyway, that's not really what I wanted to talk to you about today. At the moment I'm knitting cardigans for my nieces. It was all going really well until last Sunday when this happened...

I ran out of wool about ten rows from the end of the last sleeve. I knew it was possible – I wasn't using the recommended yarn for the pattern and I was adding length everywhere because she's so tall. I used every scrap I could find but I just couldn't make it work. It seems there's only one ball of this stuff left in the whole world, and it's in Canada, and they don't ship to Australia. Luckily my sister is married to a Canadian, so it's all sorted and the lone ball of yarn is now heading south across the ocean.

I think what annoys me most, is the large amount of yarn I'm going to have left over, and this has me thinking about all my other leftovers. The yarn from the littlest niece's cardigan, the whole plastic tub of leftover yarn in the spare room, and don't get me started on the leftover fabrics.

I have my eye on a few projects to deal with the leftover sock yarn on Ravelry here and here. And one day I'm going to start a giant hand-pieced hexie project with all my scrappy fabric bits, something like this. But let's face it, those projects are really long term and unlikely to make use of leftovers anytime soon.

So, the next idea is experimental textiles, which I'm studying this semester. I reckon that's going to make a dent in the random leftovers – things you don't want to throw away, but you really have no idea how to use. This week it's going to be shredded paper and embroidery scraps!

Next, I Googled some local charity knitting places. The leftovers from the littlest niece's cardigan will make someone a bright winter scarf and there are plenty of places in need this time of year in Australia. I think nearly all the leftovers in the spare room tub could be made into something useful to keep out the cold. 

The charity places I found online were Knit One, Give One, Knit 4 Charities and, of course, Wrap with Love. The local handknit guilds also had links. 

And lastly I've been making some knitted necklaces. These were inspired by Mexican thread necklaces I saw on my trip last year. The bindings are leftover from last semester and the knitted parts are leftover from various projects over the years. I've got some in cream and some in navy and they'll be up in my Etsy shop later this week.

So, I think that's at least my yarn leftovers sorted. How about you? Do you have any yarn scrap project ideas or are you drowning in leftovers?