Upcycled yarn surprise!

The other day I was digging through my large craft box and rediscovered some more upcycled yarn that my mother helped me unravel last summer.  Yet another forgotten project to be rediscovered there, maybe I should clean this mystical, bottomless bin out?

Both sweaters were thrifted for under $3 and I remember one being cashmere and the other cotton.  Even better, they are both a blank canvas for more dyeing experiments.  One downside, I cannot get the thrift store smell out of them, it is so sickly sweet, ick.

I'm not really sure what I want to do with the cotton yarn yet, but I decided to ply the cashmere yarn.  It definitely needed to be plied because it was a little weak and prone to snapping.  It looks more attractive and easy to work with than it was before.

There wasn't a sweater's worth of yarn here, I'm thinking that some of the sweater is hiding somewhere in my parent's house.  If I had to estimate yardage, I would say: ~675 yards (an awkward amount to have).

 

It looks a lot like the cashmere sweater I upcycled last year.  I didn't estimate the cost and savings this time but I can imagine that it was a bargin considering it is a fairly good quality cashmere.  As with most of the yarn I spin or upcycle, I haven't really put much thought into what I'll use it for.

Reflecting on 2012

Since today is the last day of 2012 (whew, what a year!), I decided to sit down and reflect on my fiber accomplishments for this year.  That is one of my favorite things about writing a blog, it allows me to go back in time in a sense.  I definitely learned a lot of new things and knitted a lot of fun and challenging projects!


Upcycling thrift store sweaters:

- Acrylic/Wool upcycling disaster
- Upcycling cashmere
- Upcycling soft wool


Tutorials:

- Dyeing with tea
- QR code yarn labeling system
- Organizing stash with recycled materials


Knitting without a pattern:

- Textured cowl
- Scrap blanket


New experiences:

- Spin to knit sock
- Steeking
- Granny squares


Dyeing:

- Dyeing for a project
- Dyeing with Wiltons food dyes
- Dyeing with egg dyes


Handspun:

- Lagoon merino
- Brown alpaca
- Lilac
- Silk hankie

- Pretty pink alpaca
- Targhee jewel
- Cotton candy
- Romney

In addition to having over a hundred posts here this year, I have been so incredibly fortunate to meet so many knitters, crocheters, and spinners from all over the world.  You all are so talented and creative, and inspire me every day.

Looking forward to another wonderful year!

 

Upcycling continues!

Many of you know that I have been really into upcycling commercially-made, thrift store sweaters into yarn.  My first try earlier in the year was a huge failure.  But the second try in June was a huge success, providing me with a large amount of cashmere yarn!

Well, now I have even more upcycled yarn to show you!  I sadly forgot to take a photo of the sweater before it was unraveled, but it was a XL men's sweater and according to the tag the fiber content was 100% lambs wool.  I payed a little over $3.00 for it. 

I have my mother to thank for the unraveling this time as well (thank you!), she just does such a great job of it and she likes to work on these kinds of projects during trips.  

I decided not to ply the yarn because I liked how it looked as a 2 ply yarn.  I'm not sure how much I have here because I don't have a scale and I'm too lazy to measure the yardage, but I would guess that I have at least 800 yards of DK weight yarn.

My mother would like for me to knit her a sweater from this yarn, but before I do that, I plan on dyeing it a more pleasant brown.  So yet again, another successful upcycling project (and believe me, I have more where this came from!).

Thrift Store Sweater Into Cashmere Yarn

I'm very excited to show the results of my second upcycled sweater project!  Some of you may recall that the first one did not go too well because I had inadvertently picked out the wrong sweater for this kind of project.  The second attempt was definitely not a failure!

This whole adventure came about as a result of my going to Goodwill (or Mennonite thrift stores, those people know what quality is) and happening to stumble across a large, men's L size, 100% cashmere sweater for $4.28 (includes tax).

Let me share this little secret, if you want good sweaters to upcycle, don't even bother with the women's section because the men's section is where it's at.  As a whole the sweaters are often cheaper, larger, and usually hardly worn (why don't American men know that sweaters are sexy?).

My mother and I had a nice time unraveling this one and then I plyed, and plyed, and plyed, which is why I'm contemplating building an Arduino microcontroller based e-spinner (don't worry, I would continue to spin my handspun by spindle, I love the process so much).  I plyed the yarn together because on it's own, it was brittle and unbalanced.

This ended up as a 4-ply, 100% cashmere (assuming average quality), worsted weight yarn in a pretty gray color that I don't think I will dye simply because it is a color I don't see a whole lot in yarn colorways.  I ended up with 265 grams and ~ 1,100 yards of yarn total.  I wish that I had kept track of how many hours this project took with the unraveling and plying, but sadly I did not.

I was interested to see how much money I likely saved by doing it this way (not counting labor), and so I did some rough calculations against what I'm assuming is a comparable yarn: Jade Sapphire Mongolian 6-Ply (which I haven't tried, but am definitely tempted to if only the price weren't out of my reach).

New, store bought cashmere yarn: 150 yards, 55 grams -->   $45.00 a skein (before tax)

Upcycled thrift store cashmere yarn: 220 yards, 55 grams -->   $1.13 a skein (including tax)

Even if the resulting yarn is not of comparable quality (which I can kind of sense by touch), that is a huge savings and allows me to knit with a luxury fiber!  This is a really fun and rewarding process and I would highly recommend it, just be sure to follow my upcycled sweater rules.

Work-in-progress Wednesday - #11

I'm back from my trip to Las Vegas, it was definitely an interesting experience!  I was able to get quite a lot of knitting done over the course of the trip and so in the next few days I'll have some new projects to show!

But until then I'll show you my current WIPs:

Knitting:

A family friend recently had a baby and so I'm happily working away on a new sweater in this jaunty red Berroco Vintage.  The pattern is Garter Yoke Baby Cardi by Jennifer Hoel, a project I have knitted before and really enjoyed!

I'm also still powering away on this cotton sweater in Classic Elite Yarns Classic Silk.  So far I like the pattern (Gaia by Kristen TenDyke), but the lace sections are taking me a little longer than I anticipated. 

Misc:

I'm a little more than halfway done with my cashmere sweater upcycling project.  Rather than post yet another photo of my plying spindle, I thought I would show how much better the yarn looks after plying.

The yarn is really attractive and soft and I'm hoping to have enough by the end to make a small sweater.  It is definitely taking me a while to ply this much yarn and I've been looking into wheel options for that very reason. 

I hope that you are all having a great Wednesday and I hope that you also join in for WIP Wednesday with Tami's Amis.

Work-in-progress Wednesday - #10

Today appears to be the tenth time I have participated in Work In Progress Wednesday, the time sure does pass by!  I love this particular meme because it allows for me to hide my procrastination behind my small bursts of progress.  In my defense, it is rather warm in Kansas right now which has made collapsing listlessly a more delightful prospect than working with materials that excel at trapping heat.

Knitting:

Here is the second of the five hats for Evelyn's (Project: Stash) Charity KAL.  Not surprisingly, this hat is just as much fun to knit on the second time as it was the first time.

I've also been working on a super secret project that I cannot give you any details on other than the fact that I'm using this amazing brick colored yarn and that it is very addictive to knit!

Upcycling:

My larger spindle has been tied up in my cashmere rescue project right now (and save that yarn I will!).  So far the whole sweater has been unraveled (thanks to super mom!) and I've got one 50g skein completed.  As you can see from the photo below I've got quite a lot further to go, but it is completely worth it in every way.

I hope that you are all having a great Wednesday and I hope that you also join in for WIP Wednesday with Tami's Amis.

Work-in-progress Wednesday - #9

This week has been another one of those weeks where projects have just been dragging by without much obvious progress, but before I know it I'll have another huge project finished.

I've got a few test knits going right now, so I sadly cannot show those (but they are all seriously awesome).

Knitting:
My Gaia is still just coming along slowly, I've just started the lace section which is much more entertaining than endless rows of stockinette stitch.  But the cotton/silk/nylon combination does make for a great summer project.

Spinning:
This Targhee fiber is really starting to annoy me (it is almost brittle?), but yesterday I finally finished the spinning portion of the project.  Next comes the plying, which I think will go by very quickly.

Misc:
Here is the progress on the cashmere sweater upcycling (this totally counts as a project).  My mother has become addicted to unraveling, I've been plying it because the strands are old enough that they snap without reinforcement.  This is going to be amazing to knit with, I can tell!

Also, I visited another thrift store in Newton, Kansas over the weekend and managed to pick up another cashmere sweater as well as a cotton one for a total of $6 (both are white for excellent dyeing opportunities).

That's all for now!  I hope to have something new to show you for next week.

I hope that you are all having a great Wednesday and I hope that you also join in for WIP Wednesday with Tami's Amis.

Upcycling Adventures Part 2

Earlier this year I attempted to upcycle a thrift store sweater with disastrous results after which I was not really interested in attempting to try it again.  Then my mother found this beauty for $4 at Goodwill last week:

This gently worn men's sweater is 100% 2-ply cashmere, a treasure to be sure.  So, I decided to put aside my past experience with upcycling and give it another try.  My mother was intrigued and decided to help me with the unraveling process, before long she was completely hooked and we were able to wind about a third of the sweater that morning.

The resulting fiber is fingering weight and a little frail, so I'll likely end up plying it for strength.  Honestly, I'm just enjoying the process of working with pure cashmere for the very first time!

I'm not sure how much yarn I'll get out of this, but I think that it will result in a lot of luxury fiber for very little cost.

Who knew a sweater could result in so much quality mother/daughter time?

The next obvious question is: what should this yarn be in its next stage of life?

Adventures With Upcycled Yarn

One day I woke up and decided that I really wanted to unravel a thrift store sweater, just for the fun of it.  So, I went down to Goodwill, found a sweater, and got to work.

I ended up following directions from Neauveau fiber arts blog, which helped me avert complete disaster.

--> Note #1:  I would really like to add is that the author of the tutorial mentions that it doesn't really matter if you cut the seams like a crazy person.  Well, as I found out later, it does matter, a lot.  If you cut one little strand then you have breaks in the yarn in two places and it causes extra work later and crappier results.  So, please for the love of yarn, cut carefully!

--> Note #2: If you plan on dyeing the upcycled yarn later.  Do not settle for anything with acrylic content unless you love a huge dye mess and strange pastel colors.  Also to defend this decision, I just wanted to see what would happen, it just didn't turn out well...

--> Note #3: Please do not use a sweater made of a yarn that is just made up of thread sized strands, because it will likely look horrible no matter what you do (see later pictures of yarn carnage).

A wool/acrylic blend sweater from Gap for purchased from Goodwill for $3.99.

Here's my sweater unraveled and wound into haphazard balls. That is a lot of yarn for $4!

I then skeined this rather splitty yarn up and attempted to dye it with my Jacquard acid dyes, which turned out to be a terrible plan (see Note #2).  The yarn did not want to take up even half of the dye (and strangely only certain pigments) and most of the color washed out when rinsed later with differing results.  I am suspecting that the garment tag was lying about the 50% wool content.

After two disastrous dyeing sessions I gave up with coloring the yarn, even though I dislike white for clothing.  All and all, I finished with a fairly large amount of yarn in two different weights (worsted and bulky).

In conclusion, I would not count this project among one of my fiber successes, but it was a learning experience and a very inexpensive mistake.  My purpose in attempting this was to see if I could take an unloved sweater in the thrift store and attempt to give it a new life by unraveling it, dyeing it, and knitting it up into something new while saving money and being sustainable.

Despite my challenges with this particular project, I think that the next time I try I'll end up with much better results. Also, I would certainly not disuade anyone from trying this kind of project, it was a lot of fun.