Waste not, want not

I have been inspired by others' stories of yarn recycling and decided it was time to learn how to do it myself. A visit to the local Vinnies yielded a bulky maroon-coloured men's jumper ($7) - I had no idea whether this was the 'right' type of jumper to unravel, how the seams were sewn, or whether it was too old or felted, but I guess my philosophy is - jump in & have a go!

This tutorial by Lee Meredith was extremely helpful. I made a few mistakes trying to rip the seams, by accidently cutting through the main sections of yarn, but oh well - the result was that I ended up with about 8 various size balls of yarn rather than 4 or so larger balls.

After the unraveling I wound the balls around a couple of chairs to make skeins (must remember to take more photos!) and then soaked overnight. At the moment the skeins are outside drying - I think it would be better to have hung them over a rod, but sometimes you have to improvise!

(note the cans of chickpeas...)
I'm still not really sure how the yarn will turn out - the washing didn't seem to remove all of the kinks and it may actually be too felted to knit with (how to tell? - if I managed to unravel it does this mean it's ok?). And I'm actually not too fond of the colour(!), BUT, it has been an interesting process. A bit of work, but not really that hard, and so from now on I will certainly be keeping an eye out for good yarn I can salvage.

TwiceShearedSheep have obviously mastered the technique and have lots of recycled yarn for sale in their etsy shop... maybe one day I'll have my own etsy store(!)