Thrift Store

The Marklund Thrift Store has become one of my regular stops lately. They drew me in with their 50% off sale a few weeks ago. That's when I got this bundle.
Looking for blankets/rugs to line the dog crate, I found this large, never opened, factory stapled, bag of yarn and stuff. I had no idea what the project was supposed to be because the paper enclosed was folded to the inside. There were many, many hanks of some kind of yarn,
a very large piece of burlap and some kind of hooking tool. It was marked $15 and but it was 50% off. I didn't want to buy more acrylic, I like to look for wool or unusual fibers (in sweaters) when I go there. Hmmm, so what to do. I flipped the bag around several times and then saw a hole in one of the plastic seams. The yarn felt very scratchy. Since this looked quite old, could have been some low quality acrylic. Still not satisfied, I continued to look closely. I noticed each hank was tied with a piece of string with a tag and a hand written number on it, most likely a color code for whatever this project was meant to be. Then I saw it, one of the tags was flipped to the other side and printed on it was "100% Pure Virgin Wool"...ooooo, the felting possibilities!!!

Recycled Yarn Project

So the results of my thrift store recycled yarn project are mixed. The first sweater I worked on was the jackpot. Upon dissecting it, I remembered something about looking at the seams. Some are GOOD seams, some are ICKY seams. The good ones are when a sweater is constructed by all the pieces being made to the correct shape then sewn together. The icky ones are when the sweaters are cut from a large piece of knitted "cloth" and a serger is used to keep all the loose ends from fraying. One of my bargain sweaters had good seams (the striped one) the other two have "icky" seams. From the striped sweater I got between 14 and 15 oz of yarn. It was knotted in the seam at each color change. I showed it to my daughter and we decided this is now what I would use for the "crazy blanket" because it really was crazy. I trimmed the knots but pretty much left the yarn in tact as it came off the sweater. I don't mind knots as much as some I guess and I'm going for quantity yardage. I know my daughter won't care at all.
I imagine it's not going to be very big but that's not the point. The initial point was to see if I could be successful at taking apart a thrift store sweater, the secondary point was to quickly make my daughter a blanket. Here's the progress so far....I've used about half the yarn.

Thrift Store Challenge

Last Thursday my daughter saw me working on a comfortghan for my friend's brother and decided blue was her new favorite color and I had to make her a blue blanket. So I opened up the stash and let her look for blue yarn. Being only 6 years old she doesn't understand weights and fiber contents of yarn, however she does have a very good sense of color. I directed her towards the myriad balls of Lion Brand Kitchen cotton I had picked up in the clearance bin of Michael's because they didn't have labels. I have made a couple of items out of various balls but there was still a lot left, many in navy or medium blue. She picked one of each of those as well as a lonely 2.5 oz ball of Sugar 'n Cream light blue. I could tell she already had the design in her head. She said she wanted one like I made Roxy (our 12 year old Schnoodle). I found 3 hanks of rug yarn at the thrift store and made about a 20 inch Granny Square "blanket" for her. I asked her to draw me what it looked like. She was frustrated because she didn't have the right color crayons so we just talked about which color would go in the center, then next, then next. She also apparently decided she was not quite through with her "pink" era because she wanted me to use the left over balls of pink and purple from the skirt I recently made her. I told her "this is going to be a crazy blanket." So I put everything into a project bag and planned on working on it over the weekend.

Then on Friday, on my second trip to the thrift store near work I again went looking for one of those huge bargain bags of yarn I've heard others talk about. What I found was a knitted dishrag made with Sugar 'n Cream for 50 cents. I grabbed it thinking I can take this apart and mix it into the "crazy blanket". Then I thought, "...hmm, taking things apart...." I've heard of people finding great sweaters and recycling them into yarn for something new. Since I was in a thrift store I thought I'll just browse for a sweater that doesn't cost too much so I don't feel bad if I wreck it. I saw a huge rack of them right in the middle of the store. Touched some really nice wool, cashmere, angora, etc. but couldn't bring myself to want to dissect them because they were so pretty. All the sweaters were tagged $4 so I thought that was a great deal if I could find one to take apart. For some reason I was drawn to several cotton ones. I picked three that I liked the color of. I also decided to get a really pretty light bluish gray lambswool/angora cable cardigan for my daughter (as a gift, not as yarn). So began my adventure into yarn recycling. Now as a co-worker has pointed out, "you don't NEED to do this for yarn, you have plenty of yarn!" True. I consider this just an extension of my craft. So here are the sweaters in their original form......The pink ones are 100% cotton,

stripey is a cotton/acrylic blend (VERY SOFT! and pliable).