Mission accomplished!

I recently finished a crocheted scarf, which I made from some of my handspun wools, and decided to challenge myself with the leftovers. I decided that it would be fun to see if I could use up every last bit of yarn and not even have an inch left over.

First I made a scarf, which I have already posted about here.

Then I decided to go back to crochet and I designed this hat:

I ran out of the handpaint most of the way through the last round so I undid it and added a contrast edge in brown. I made this hat 3 times before I was happy with it. First I tried it with trebles (US double crochet), but I didn't like the length of the stitches with this yarn. Then I started again with half trebles (US half double crochet) but I joined the rounds and started each new one with a couple of chains for the first stitch. That made a horrible colour jog that I couldn't live with so I ripped it out again and crocheted the whole thing as a whackingly big spiral.

I liked it so much that I made another with small amounts of leftover green.

This time I'd only done a couple of colours before I realised I *should* be joining the end of every round and using a chain to start. My gauge was a tiny bit off so I shrank it for a few minutes in the washing machine. It doesn't look felted but it's the right size now.

Then I decided a bit of knitting was in order because I still had a huge ball of brown left.

So I made this rolled brim hat with a check stripe. It reminds me of a policeman's hat. Which is a shame...

At this point I was left with a medium sized ball of brown (still!) and a lot of teeny tiny scraps of various greens. Things began to get desperate.

With the fibonacci sequence in mind, I started another knitted hat.

I knew I had more than enough left to make a basic beanie, so I decided to decrease away about a half of the stitches as I normally would, then I worked 4 rounds between decreases instead of decreasing every round. I'd seen a ski hat in a 1950's pattern book that used a similar technique and I really like the shape so I thought "What the heck". After all, I was only using tiny scraps that I'd normally have thrown away at this point.

But even then I still had teeny amounts of some green and brown left!

I enlisted the help of a scrap of rainbow handpaint (even though it's not handspun), and made these, to sew on future hats.

Those little skeins at the snake's noses are for sewing them on. And I don't have a single scrap of yarn left!