a weekend of sweater unraveling

I’ve been thinking about white lately. Not bright white, but ivory, soft white and ecru. I’ve been keeping my eye out at the thrift stores, but all I could seem to find was that yellowish cream. Yuck. I even strolled down the yarn aisles at craft stores, which I haven’t done in a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to buy new. Not when I had so much at home.

Then one day while I was digging around in my stash closet I saw a beautiful, un-felted Gap sweater. It was the perfect color white and so soft: wool, nylon, angora rabbit and cashmere. And it had perfect seams for unraveling (those Gap sweaters always do!)

Friday evening I used a seam ripper to carefully take apart the front, back and sleeves. Saturday evening I unraveled it with the help of my swift and ball winder. This is what I had Sunday morning.

Don’t you just love how un-knit yarn looks like ramen noodles? Usually I will just work from noodle-y yarn, but I decided to try and get some of the kinks out. I soaked each bundle in cold water for 15-30 minutes.

After soaking, I hung them up to dry. I put a few wooden blocks in plastic grocery bags to weight the yarn at the bottom.

Look at what I have now! Isn’t it beautiful? Goodwill is having their 99 cent sale this weekend. I might have to check out the sweater rack.

thrifty reuse: I bought this sweater at a garage sale for $1. Can you believe it? Here’s my favorite online tutorial for unraveling a sweater for yarn.

website update: If you are reading this via rss, you should check out my website’s new sidebar. I’ve put together a categoried list of my tutorials, tips and patterns.