If you are an avid knitter (or live with one), you are probably familiar with the idea of a stash. There seems to be yarn accumulating everywhere – pretty, new skeins from festivals, fairs, local yarn shops, and internet ones (which are particularly sneaky by delivering the yarn straight to your mailbox).
We all plan various projects that may or may not come to fruition, and in the meantime we continue to be tempted by new, different, beautiful colours and textures.
However, in addition to this new stash acquisition, there is the yarn that we’ve actually used for various projects. But most projects don’t use exactly whole numbers of yarn-skeins. So then there are leftovers. I, myself, have lots of drawers, bags, bins and what not of leftovers like this:
And what to do with it? It is, after all, very nice yarn. Just not enough to make anything out of, really. Well….. I guess I could make a third mitt. Or a doll-sized shawl. But what would I do with that?
Enter the piecework afghan. In my current project, each unit is very small. So small, in fact, that most of my leftover skeins can make more than one unit. In order to not make the finished afghan look super-busy and scrappy, I have sorted the leftover yarn by colour family. Right now I’m working on the blue section.
It’s really fun to revisit all this leftover yarn, and remembering the original projects. It’s like finding old friends again. So far I have yarn from mittens, shawls, sweaters, and scarves. As well as some samples from a couple of different dyers. All of the yarn is close to fingering weight, some a bit heavier and some a little lighter, but on the balance, it centres around fingering weight. And in my collection of leftovers, there is a LOT of fingering weight.
Can’t wait to move on to another colour family and visit some new (old) yarn. 
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