Sheep Shots: Repurposing Old Sweaters

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Repurposing Old Sweaters

Several years ago, I made the Other Half a most wonderful cardigan of superwash wool in a navy blue so dark as to almost be black.

Though it fit him well for the times (over-sized sweaters being all the rage), that puppy

grew
and grew
and grew
until it was no longer stylishly over-sized, but rather ludicrously large. And styles had changed as well, so you see the problem.

Did I mention that it was an extra large? And dark, dark blue (can you say "midnight?" ). And 732 miles of seed stitch? And that it had (as superwash wool does) grown a bit (okay, a lot). The me that knits now (in 2014) knows to use smaller needles.

Beautiful wool. Wonderful pewter buttons. There was a photo but I can't find it anywhere.

Crinkly yarn

So, it was time to repurpose that sweater. First, I frogged the whole damned thing and used my trusty ball winder to make lovely cakes (about 430) of the wonderful wool.

And I started to reknit using a go-to pattern (the Adult V-neck cardigan in Rich Designs Kids to Grown-Ups Seamless Sweaters-love this classic booklet. Use it lots!).

Again, sorry I didn't take a photo, but the reknitting with frogged yarn was not going well. It had the look and feel of a hearty boucle. Not exactly the manly look I wanted!

So I slipped the live stitches to a piece of yarn and gave the sweater-in-progress a good soak in warm water and a spin-dry in the salad spinner.

I was more pleased with the fabric once it dried and was back on the needle, so I commenced to re-hanking all those pretty little cakes of used yarn.

After a bath and hanging to dry, the resulting yarn is satisfactory.

I do wonder, though, if I might be happier in the long run if I had just trashed the original sweater (after removing the buttons, of course) and started over in something new.

Labels: big people clothes, yarn diet