Monday, January 21, 2008

recycling yarn


I was at a thrift store last week hunting for the usual treasures - linen tea towels, old quilts, etc. when I ran my hands across a sweater. OMG - it was so soft. I looked at the tag and it said 100% cashmere, made in Scotland. It is a mens XL and in fabulous shape. The sweater is a green heather colour - a colour I can't wear but I know a few people who would look fabulous in it so it came home with me. I've recycled sweaters (for yarn) before and I was a little worried that I would accidentally cut into the sweater while picking apart the seams. But this sweater was sewn together with sewing thread so ripping it was really easy. I had it apart in no time. I started by winding the yarn on the ball winder but the strands aren't spun very tightly and the yarn kept snapping. I ended up winding it by hand.

I've got about half of the back undone. I'm trying to gauge how much yarn I'll have. Colourmart claims 2300 yds of 2:28NM cashmere per 150g. The sweater weighed around 425g before frogging. I think the sweater yarn is slightly heavier than the Colourmart cashmere so I estimate that I have at least 2300 yds. I'll be skeining up the yarn and washing it to get out the kinks so there'll be an opportunity to calculate yardage.

I'm keeping an eye on all those stole suggestions because I'll be looking for a pattern for this yarn. My current favourite is the Woodland shawl. Mmmm, mossy green leaves...

The Peapod baby sweater didn't get much attention this weekend. I did reach the bottom of the armholes. I've got 3 counters going - one for the leaf chart repeats, a count of the button hole rows, and row count (from the beg of the armhole opening) so that I can match the fronts to the backs. I need more kacha counters!


This is the cutest thing I've ever knit!

2 comments:

PurlingPirate said...

Oh my! That is looking way too cute for a baby sweater!

The Imperfect Knitter said...

Wow, lucky you finding the cashmere sweater , how about knitting a fabulous shawl with it ?
Is a thrift shop the equivalent of our charity shop ?