Upcycling leftover yarn: Your top 3 favorite ways to use leftover yarn

Dear users, dear designers,
why not just write here in this thread, completely spontaneously and from the gut, what you love doing most with leftover yarn. This is sure to turn into a wonderfully colorful collection of ideas.

Please do not post any advertising / advertising links here in this thread. Please put advertising for patterns specifically for using leftover yarn in this thread
https://www.crazypatterns.net/de/forum/topic/12604/wollreste-nicht-verschwenden-mach-was-schoenes-aus-den-resten

I always use my leftover yarn for test swatches when I’m designing a new design.

Small crocheted flowers or lots of colorful pom-poms that you can then use to create something.

Tie them together and wind them into a colorful ball. :)
I then use this to crochet sections that won’t be visible later (after “sewing/assembling”).

I also use shorter pieces as stitch markers from time to time. They don’t get in the way like hard markers made of plastic, wire, etc.

I use my leftover yarn to try out new things—like new crochet techniques, etc.

Sometimes I use it for smaller crochet projects like flowers or appliqués for my amigurumis.

Sometimes I even put my leftover yarn together with the stuffing inside the bodies of my crochet figures; that way, you can save a little on stuffing and make good use of your leftovers.

Best regards, Dorigurmi

I save my leftover yarn until I have about 500g, and then I simply crochet colorful, mixed-material blankets using double crochet stitches. I give these away as gifts, and they’re always a huge hit because every blanket is one-of-a-kind.

There are some really great ideas there.

I’ve always used the very short leftover yarn for stuffing.

I use the longer ones now and then for flowers, faces to sew on, butterflies, etc.

Do you save leftover yarn in case you ever need to mend or darn something and need that exact shade again—because two different colors would look weird?
Or do people not do that anymore these days? Do you do that—set aside some spare yarn on purpose?
I mean, with socks, you do that anyway, right? So you can go over it with a darning egg and all that, and prick your fingers in the process if you’re dumb enough to swap out the darning needle for a sharp one.
That’s also why I don’t mend socks—I don’t like wool socks anyway, just plain old 100% cotton ones. But I mean, other people probably do it—mending socks and stuff. Are there people here who do that?

Pom-poms made from leftover yarn are always a good idea, of course. The more colors, the more eye-catching they are, naturally. And the leftover yarn doesn’t even have to be that long for that. Although, it just depends on the technique—if you use a pom-pom template like that, you should be able to wrap the leftover yarn around it a few times; otherwise, it won’t hold together.

How do you actually make your pom-poms? With the fork technique? The cardboard-template technique? Or with the store-bought plastic pom-pom maker?