Good evening! As you may or may not know, in addition to dyeing and spinning, one of my hobbies for quite a while now has been recycling sweaters. I forget where I found the article, but I saw that someone had posted a tutorial on how to unravel sweaters from thrift stores and such, and reuse the yarn. What a fabulous idea, I thought! I'm broke, I love to knit, and I need yarn! (Life pro tip: even if you don't need yarn, you never have enough yarn; therefore, crafters always need more yarn.) 

So, I tried it. I went to the thrift store and grabbed a couple sweaters. The ones I picked up on my first trip were.... a bit ambitious. I picked a lambswool/angora blend (that was slightly felted...ugh), a 100% cashmere blend, a cotton/acrylic/angora blend, and a 100% acrylic (hey, it was really soft, and it was purple. Leave me alone!).

I ended up practicing on the acrylic sweater. There were plenty of knots where I had to tie the pieces together because I had accidentally cut the yarn when I thought I was only cutting the seaming thread, but regardless, it was practice, and I was hooked. I ended up selling the yarn from that sweater for just over what I bought the sweater for.

The next one I tried was the lambswool/angora blend that was slightly felted. Of course I didn't think the slight felting was going to be a problem, but oh boy..... that sweater drove me nuts. It took me months to unravel just the front and back.. eventually I gave it up as a bad job and ended up chucking it in the trash in a moment of anger. I do not regret it in the slightest.

The cotton/acrylic/angora blend was, thankfully, in much better shape than the last sweater was.. and it was my easiest time so far. I had a blast ripping out the seaming thread and separating all the pieces, and then unraveling the sleeves.. everything was going great. And then, I started unraveling the front of the sweater. I encountered something I didn't even know existed.. The front and back pieces were made with alternating strands of two separate yarns. I had to wind one strand onto my ball winder until the end of the row, and wind the other strand into a ball by hand until the end of the row, untangle them, and start again. Every. Single. Row.

That was okay, though. It was great fun. That's one of the things I love about recycling sweaters... Each one is like a unique puzzle. You never know what interesting technique or construction or obstacle you will find with each new sweater!

The whole point of this dreadfully long post, ladies and gents, was to tell you that I just posted the yarn from that first 100% cashmere sweater on my Etsy shop the other day. It is beautiful, soft, wonderful yarn, and I am so pleased that I can pass it on to someone to use in their crafting endeavors. I had so much fun recycling it and learning about that particular sweater's secrets, and I hope someone else has just as much fun knitting or crocheting with it, and makes it into something beautiful.

Recycled 100% Cashmere laceweight yarn

Oh! I can't believe I almost forgot to mention! I was inspired to write this post because I made a trip to a thrift store today, and I majorly SCORED!! I found TWO 100% cashmere sweaters.. FOR TWO DOLLARS EACH!! Sorry, I am very excited. I can't wait to start taking them apart, but I do have several other sweaters in line before those! 

Happy crafting everyone! :D