I have just finished

knitting a jacket out of left-over yarns. It still needs the many ends tidied away (although I knitted them in) and there are buttons to be put on.  What will happen to it after that I am not sure. I may use it if the weather ever gets cold enough because I made it so it would fit me. I may pass it on to someone else.  It really does not matter.  (And yes, I know about photographs. I will try to put one up on Ravelry later.)
What does matter is that I did not just give up on the left overs. I did not just throw them out or dump them at the charity shop. I used them and turned them into something potentially useful.
My father has a collection of such garments. His are all pullovers made mostly by my mother. They are the garments he wears in the shed and in the garden. The colours in them do not coordinate. My mother made hers by the simple process of picking up one ball of wool and knitting it until she came to the end. She would then join in another ball and repeat the process. The balls were different sizes so the stripes would vary in size from a row or two to much larger chunks of colour. My mother was not interested in making anything beautiful. She just wanted it to be functional.
The colours in mine should not have coordinated either. Had I set about the process in the same way as my mother the garment I have just made would not look as if it went together at all. I was fortunate enough to have five balls of the same colour yarn - it was three different dye-lots. (For the non-knitters among you this matters. It can show.) This may be why I found the five balls in the local charity shop. The way I have used them you cannot see the variation in shade. It is the only wool in the garment that I bought specifically for it. The rest really was left overs belonging to me or to other people and passed on to me.
My father looked at it when I had cast off the last stitch. He said, among other things, "That was a lot of work."
Yes, it was. I knew it would be. I knitted other things in between. It was my "I mostly do not need to think about this so I will do it while I watch the news" knitting.
But perhaps it is also a reflection of my life. If I want it to go together I need to work at it. I need to make the effort. It requires, as far as possible, a certain amount of planning. I have to fit pieces in and make use of what I have. If I can turn out one useful garment at the end of it perhaps I will have achieved something.