There are many good ways to clean out your stash. Here are some ideas for left over yarns:

Try not to buy too much or too far ahead
This is easier said than done when you are in a knitting mode — and if there are good sales.

Give them away
Donate them to a church or to an elder center. Many of the churches make crafts to sell in their annual yard sales.

If they are appropriate yarn, find out who knits caps for the neonatal unit. They also need yarn.

Trade or sell them
Sites such as Ravelry have trading sections. Ebay is also a source.

Make something with them
Knit a sweater, vest, hat, scarf with two strands of yarn.
One is a full skein (or not) which you will carry through the whole piece (alternatively you can use partial skeins for this too), the other strand is one of the left over yarns that you will be knitting, but before you get to the end of the partial skein, add a third partial skein yarn. Continue this pattern until you are done. When you add another skein before you are finished, there are no sharp edges to the change of yarn. In a few days I will share a sweater that was done with this method. I generally knot the yarn in as I go, keeping the knot to the back of the fabric.

This is very workable, depending on what sorts of yarns you have. There is even a very expensive skein of yarn Prism’s Wild Stuff that is made in this fashion, by tying into the skein various yarns with different textures. It is gorgeous stuff, but it has some wool in it.

Wild Stuff is composed of 30-40 different hand dyed, gauge coordinated yarns. They are tied together end to end by hand, so that as you knit the texture and colors are always changing. Wild Stuff has a lot of eyelash, metallic, and other highly textured yarns. Wild Stuff has some wool, kid mohair and other animal fibers in it. Like all Stuffs, a larger needle can be used for a more open fabric in ponchos, wraps and scarves. We have successfully worked on as large as a #11 needle.

Here’s an article about making a magic ball by knotting your own.

Here’s a project I made:
I knitted a jacket out of the underlying yarn. I bought an entire bag of the yarn because I wasn’t sure how much I would need for the sweater pattern, as I knew I was going to make it longer. That meant I ended up with some left over and the yarn was too pretty and too expensive to let waste.

I didn’t want a scarf to be identical, but I wanted it to be wearable together. This way I also have a option to give it as a gift.

I carried a bright lilac eyelash along with the sweater yarn, “>Crystal Palace Party yarn in Celebration, which is a very silky ribbon yarn.

Knit every row. Bind off loosely. Slip the first stitch of every row as if to knit, except for the first row. Figure out how wide you want your scarf to be. That will determine the number of stitches.

I had to rip out a couple of starting rows until I got the right number. It was going to be way too wide. I try to knit on needles that are size 13 or above, just because it knits up fast.

Karin

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Arts, Knitting, Pattern, Scarves