What I Am
Times are tough and the price of luxury fibers like wool and cashmere are high. For knitters, crocheters, and other fiber artists, the prices of these items can be prohibitive. Right now, it seems like everyone is trying to save money. My own personal experience is no exception; I work in an entry-level position in my industry, and I am about to leave it to attend law school this fall. I don’t have the free-flowing cash to be able to buy everything I’d like at my local yarn store. It is a wonderful source when I need something very specific like a 100% cotton bulky yarn, but a frivolous shopping trip where I allow myself to browse will only end in tears as I discover that the yarn I want is fifteen times more expensive than the amount I can afford.
Occasionally, this results in my will power caving in to my desire for yarn. When this happens, I eat rice and canned beans for about a month because I have spent my entire food budget on yarn! But oh, that soft baby alpaca was worth it…or so I tell myself. But, I think, there has got to be a better way to supply myself with the basics!
Enter the internet. I am a knitter who loves soft animal fibers, but I cannot afford to spend $100 every time I want to knit something larger than a pair of socks! I splurged on gorgeous, soft yarn and knit my first sweater over the past winter as a Christmas present to myself (because hey, I deserve nice things too). In the process of searching Google for tips, I found a remarkable article describing how to unravel sweaters to reclaim the yarn. At the local Goodwill stores, sweaters are priced at $3.75. That’s $3.75 for a whole sweater’s worth of yarn! Granted, it often requires quite a bit of work to prepare it for knitting. First you have to unravel the sweater. Next, you have to clean the yarn. You might also need to double, triple, or quadruple the strands if the sweater was made from very small yarn. It helps tremendously to have a few tools, some of which can be made cheaply out of PVC. The great thing about doing this is that there is an entire community on the internet dedicated to reclaiming yarn from tossed-aside sweaters and giving it new life, so there is tons of information out there!
Recycled yarn is great. The price is right, it saves landfill space by using sweaters that might otherwise be thrown away, and you can get a wide variety of fiber blends. Of course, availability varies by location. I live in the Southern US in an area where many Northerners move, so I often find nice sweaters at my local thrift stores. The most common blends are wool/angora, but I also occasionally find nice cashmeres and silks.
Unraveling has become as much of a hobby for me as knitting, and it’s a great activity to let my wrists rest when any pain starts flaring up (I am paranoid about getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). It is relaxing, and it allows me to have endless fodder for my other hobbies (dying yarn, knitting, felting, sewing…to name a few). Another perk is that I can sell my work to other knitters for lower prices than they would have to pay for brand new fiber. I have way too much unraveled yarn to use it all myself, and this is a great way to share my recycling with other people.
I love to take something plain, basic, or drab and see how beautiful I can make it. That is what I am.
Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian “Nuri” Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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