The task of picking the right sweater to unravel can be daunting. Each Goodwill in my area (there are 3 nearby) has racks and racks of ladies’ sweaters. They range from muted, soft colors to bright, bold designs. There are sweaters made from the finest, tiniest thread, and there are ones made from super chunky yarn. And then there is the fiber…oh, the fiber. So many times I have found a lovely, soft sweater and eagerly pulled it off the rack, only to discover upon checking the tag that the yarn is 100% acrylic. Sadly, I plunk these sweaters back on the rack without a second thought. You’ll see why in just a moment.
On my first foray into thrifting sweaters, I was excited and pretty indiscriminate. I picked up bulky 50% wool/50% acrylic blends and things mixed with large amounts of viscose or cotton. Don’t get me wrong; these yarns will work just fine, but when you are taking home 20 sweaters from every store you visit, you should probably raise your requirements a bit. I narrowed down my list of what is required for me to take a sweater home.
Let’s run this sweater through the checklist:
- The sweater must feel soft to the touch. (Check!) I am picky about the yarns I will knit with, and I feel I owe it to anyone I knit for or my yarn customers to provide nice, soft fiber. Why unravel something for yarn that you wouldn’t wear when it’s knit up? It’s no good if it’s scratchy wool. Occasionally if there is a nice striped pattern on a 100% wool sweater, I will take it home and felt it to make a bag or a hat, but that is rare. I have to ask myself how many felted sweaters I actually need. Given that I have a pile of 5 or 6 waiting for my attention at the moment, I need to limit further acquisition until the current pieces are used.
- The yarn must be bigger than thread. (Check!) The bigger, the better. Occasionally I will take home a sweater knit with very small yarn, but this is the exception rather than the rule. If I don’t have to re-ply it before use, that’s time I save.
- The color must be solid or striped, pretty, or light enough that I can overdye it. (Check!) No sense in buying a sweater made from ugly yarn that you can’t beautify or complicated designs that will be tough to unravel. Plus, when yarn is stranded across the back of a design, the strands may have weak spots from rubbing. Luckily for me, most of the nice sweaters I see in the thrift store are knit in light colors.
- The fiber content must be mostly animal fiber. (Check!) Wool, angora, cashmere, silk, and mohair are all fibers from animals. That means their composition will allow them to take up the dye I use and hold onto it. It also means hot water will help relax the fibers when I want to straighten out the kinks in the yarn. A small percentage of nylon isn’t going to hurt; nylon actually helps give the yarn strength and takes the dye reasonably well. Fibers made from plants (rayon, linen, cotton, etc) won’t retain the dye, but a small percentage of them won’t hurt and may give you an interesting color pattern if you decide to dye the yarn. Your preferences may vary; if plant fibers are what you seek, go for it! I have some very fine reclaimed lace-weight linen that I am going to try making something with. I wouldn’t recommend acrylic because it’s difficult to unkink and it’s so cheap to buy that it’s not worth the effort of unraveling.
- The seams must be “good” seams. (Check!) This basically means the sweater should be knit in individual pieces and sewn together at the seams with a crocheted seam. These are easy to unravel, and your yarn will come apart into one long string. This will look like the pictures below: one side will have a long chain of interlinked loops that look live Vs and one side will look like a series of dashes. If the seams are serged (lots of thread wrapped around and around the edge of the seam), then it means the sweater was cut from a larger piece of knit fabric and will unravel into lots of small sections of yarn. These might be good for a felting project, but definitely not for salvaging yarn. Occasionally the seams at the top of the shoulder are serged and the rest are fine; these can be cut off with minimal yarn loss.
- The yarn must be in good condition. (Check!) If the sweater is felted at all, that will make the yarn harder to pull apart. Also keep in mind that worn-looking yarn will most likely look worn in the FO once knitted up. Pills and fuzz will usually come off during the unraveling process if the yarn is in otherwise good condition, but I check under the arms, around cables, and on the inside for matting and felting. If you stretch the fabric and you can definitely see definition in the yarn, the sweater is probably fine.
- Check for holes, button-band construction, stains, etc. (Check!) Moth holes/runs are okay if there are only a few and they are isolated. If they are spread evenly through the garment, don’t bother. You might even want to report it to one of the store staff. (Some stores will give these items away and you can take it home for felting.) I generally avoid cardigans because of the button bands…they are often stitched with thread and the holes are usually machined, which cuts the yarn. If the button band is knitted separately and attached with a crocheted seam, then I might take it home, especially if the buttons are nice enough to use on a project. Stains are okay if they are small or if you are planning to dye the yarn anyway, but I like to check for them anyway. When you take the yarn apart, it probably won’t be knit back up with the same spots next to each other. That means the stain won’t be obvious in the new FO unless it’s a drastically different color from the yarn.
This sweater has a button band with machined button holes:
But the button band is attached with a crochet chain, so the body of the sweater will be fine:
Plus, look at these large, gorgeous buttons!
If all of the above conditions are met, I move on to more detailed checking:
Found a sweater that meets all of those conditions? Great! Now you can throw it in the basket and take it home. It’s important to note that anything you bring home from the thrift store has an unknown history; you never know what might be lurking in the fiber. Take a look at my next tutorial, Dust and lice and moths, oh my!, for tips on bringing home thrift store finds and my quarantine process.
Dyet Yarns tutorials by Adrian “Nuri” Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
