Recycling Yarn: Unraveling a Thrift Store Find Can Save You Big Bucksby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 23 Jan 2007 03:45 PM
Knitting, especially, has seen a huge surge in popularity, along with a huge surge in the price of real wool for knitting. How much would you pay for two pounds of soft knitting wool? How about $3 or less? The local thrift store is a great secret for finding inexpensive and good quality wool yarn. Many people donate the wool sweaters they got for the holidays and have hardly worn. With just a little time spent unravelling a good quality sweater, you can have some good quality wool for all of your projects. Here are some tips on what sweaters make the best reusable yarn, and what you can look for. Obviously you want a sweater that looks new or hardly worn. A heavily used and washed sweater will yield poor yarn. Look for tags that are bright and readable or inspection stickers on the inside of garments (if the sticker is still there, the sweater was probably never worn as most of those stickers are either removed by the owner or lost in the wash). Avoid any sweater with a lot of pilling. Don't forget to check the inside of the sweater as well. Look for sweaters that were knitted in a round or sweaters that don't have machine sewn seams. If a sweater's seams look like they were done with a serger, then the ends may be cut. Unraveling this type of sweater may produce lots of short pieces of yarn instead of the one long thread that you can reuse. Serger seams look like they have lots of overstitching in them. Look for cable-knit and tightly woven sweaters because they use a lot of yarn in their construction. Heavy yard will stand up to reuse much better than a lightweight or "angel" yarn. Look for neutral or light colors that can be easily dyed, if you want to dye the yarn. Stay away from acrylic yarn. Acrylics are so inexpensive, that it just isn't worth unravelling a sweater to reuse the yarn. Don't worry if the sweater had only one or two small stains. You can always cut that yarn out if necessary. After unraveling, don't forget to soak or wash the yarn in warm water and gentle detergent or baby shampoo. Then let it drip dry. Related Articles: Creative Uses for Thrift Store Finds Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments Nola Redd (7081) 23 Jan 2007 09:41 PMGreat article! Maybe I missed something, but how do you actually go about unraveling the sweater?  Mary Ann Romans (26791) 24 Jan 2007 03:22 AMNola, I've always started at the top. I could probably write another blog with step by step instructions! What do you think? Community Tags knitting, recycling yarn, thrift store, thrifty yarn, yarn Discuss this article
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Knitting and crocheting are wonderful hobbies. Not only are they fun and creative, but they usually give you practical finished products.
