Leftover Yarn

One of the most difficult things about making a sky blanket was deciding how many balls of each colour I'd need to make it. I could work out how much actual yarn was going to be needed without much trouble... but guessing what colours might show up in the sky the most during the year, well that was pretty tricky. I worked out how much yarn I needed for the blanket, divided that up into what I thought was a likely balance of colours and then ordered an extra ball of each shade just in case.

I knew I was going to end up with lots of extra yarn left over (especially when I ended up having to order more light grey thanks to the gloomy weather - I massively underestimated how many grey days we were going to have!) but I also knew I was bound to find a use for the DK yarn I was using so I didn't mind too much.

All the same though, look at all this yarn! Eek.

(I've yet not counted up exactly how many balls of each shade I did use, but I'll be sure to do so before I do my final sky blanket blog post ... which will hopefully be sometime soon.)

As you can see from the photos, I've started using the leftovers to knit some simple garter stitch blanket squares. Originally I'd planned on adding these to one of the "random leftovers" blankets I've been gradually knitting squares for but actually I've got so much of this yarn left over that I think I'm going to end up with another sky blanket. Well, a blanket in sky colours anyway! Luckily, I really like how these colours look together.

I'm also using some of the yarn to make a pair of mittens for my sister - using a pattern from Learn to Knit, Love to Knit by Anna Wilkinson.  I was going to make these in just two colours (which I'd planned to let her choose from my leftover sky stash) but it turns out she likes the colour blocked effect I got when using up small leftover balls of yarn to knit the first test mitten, so I'll be carefully counting rows and making the second mitten to match :)