I have yarn. What next?

Having carded and spun the batts I’ve made I’m ending up with smallish skeins of yarn which are pretty but need to have some sort of purpose.  Perhaps if I put a bit more thought into what I was making right from the start it would work better…

The pink sparkly batt is now half an adult sized hat, one that won’t work because there just isn’t enough yarn to finish it.  It needs frogging and reworking in a smaller size but I just haven’t got the heart to do it at the moment.  So I’m starting another hat with some of the other yarn. 

The new hat’s yarn was a mix of some dyed fleece in all sorts of autumn shades which I bought at the East Sussex Guild Textile show last year – I think I paid something like £2 for a carrier bag full.  I blended it with some plum and dark green silk and threw in some mid-brown merino.  I made two batts, one with more of the  dark fleece the other with the lighter, brighter shades in it.  Then I spun one bobbin that was 2/3 dark then 1/3 light and the other 1/3 dark and 2/3 light,  my theory being that it should the finished two-ply would have a gradual colour change.

The thing I am really impressed about is how I can wind a centre-pull ball – this one is very neat!!

I just need to find the right hat design now for 100 yards of bulky-ish yarn…