I was once gifted with some beautiful but impossibly-fine handpainted silk, and half a pound of it; as is, it would take me years to knit up at the gauge it would need. But put it with another yarn, and it would sparkle and glow and really set it off while working up quickly.
So that’s what I did with it, a large shawl, and this is what I just finished with some of the leftover: an easy, mindless carry-around project, one that says to the nonknitters, lookee what I can do with the time you waste sitting in that waiting room, expecting to be entertained by old magazines that might or might not be there. Pretty, and soft, and gonna make someone’s day… 
Not that I would ever think that.