Resourcefulness

A little while ago, I acquired a large beige wool sweater with the idea of tearing it apart and recycling the yarn, possibly to dye it. It was slow going at first, pulling out the seams and figuring out the sorta weird construction. Ruby helped, and really enjoyed the actual unravelling of the stitches. It’s a long process (huge sweater, probably 2 pounds of yarn), and I’m not done yet.

I used a wooden toy that Ben made to help me. There are four dowels with rings to go on them. The kids have outgrown it, but I thought I could use it for this project. I used the base (just the dowels) to wind the yarn into hanks before washing. Thanks Ben!

Ruby is pulling yarn out of the sweater there on the floor. I’m winding it onto the dowels.

There are three big hanks there, and that was just one half of one sleeve.

You can see our current reading choices on the table, as well: Mike Ely’s trilogy about Alpha Centauri, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

I’ve been reading a lot of knitting and fiber arts blogs lately, and looking at lots of pictures of yarn. This isn’t particularly lovely yarn, but I wanted to capture the level of crimpedness (kinkiness? waviness?) pre-wash. It should relax back to regular after washing and weighing it down slightly.