knit Archives - Grid and Bloom

There are different kinds of Â people out there.Â There are the knitters, non-knitters, knitter and crocheters, loom knitters, and non-crocheters. The kind of people I am going to talk about today are the different kinds of yarn people out there.

There are the Yarn Elite, Yarn Fanatic, Yarn Specific, Yarn Thrifters and the Just Give Me SomeYarn folks.

You know the Yarn Elite. They shop at the little specialty shops in your area called Ewe Need It, The Knit Shoppe, Happy Needles (not to be confused with people on the corner selling drugs) and the Hooker’s Happy Nook (also not to be confused with other people on the corner.) Yarn from these shops often comes in it’s own little plastic or paper sack. It will have the name printed on the outside and a business card on the inside. IF the Yarn Elite has been a card carrying member for very long then they SPIN their own yarn and buy fleece and roving, which is a completely different ball game.

The Yarn Fanatic, often confused with and can be seen leaving the same shops as the Yarn Elite. There is a huge difference between the two. While the Yarn Elite shops the specialty shop the Yarn Fanatic shops the specialty shops and online. Their mail carrier can tell you that they are in fact a Yarn Fanatic. Â They receive regular installments of large plastic shipping bags or boxes of yarn from completely different continents. They are known to even deconstruct sweaters to be able to use the yarn in a different project.

The Yarn Specific knitter or crocheter only works with a specific brand of yarn. They may in fact only work with Elite yarns or Yarn Fanatic yarns, or super big skeins from the neighborhood department store, or just simply a particular fiber such as wool. People that are Yarn Specific can tell you exactly why their yarn is SO much better than other yarns. In fact they might also be a Yarn Elitist or Yarn Fanatic.

Yarn Thrifters are also a great group of knitters to get to know. IF you ever need to make a granny square scrap blanket, or the sock yarn Â blanketÂ http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sock-yarn-blanket, they are the people to know. They will have saved every single piece of yarn from every project they have ever made. They will in fact have saved every piece of yarn too short to save and have it squirreled away in case of the world wide yarn shortage. They will also buy every ball of yarn they ever come across that is on sale, in a yard or garage sale, or in a thrift shop. They may hate the color but they have it ….just in case and it is after all a really good value.

You must not confuse the Yarn Thrifter with the Just Give me Some Yarn people. The Just Give Me Some Yarn will shop anywhere at any time. The prime difference being that they will actually finish their projects and actually be needing some more. They often start scrap yarn projects in an effort to use up their current stash. They often run out of yarn five inches or 10 squares from being completed, and they will not have enough yarn to finish the scrap project. So they will often HAVE to BUY more. You can find them roaming their house in search of yarn, “Just give me some Yarn!” they say. They may in fact post about needing specific yarns on the internet. They will spend their time scouring the internet for that particular yarn on E-bay, Amazon, Etsy and Ravelry.

There you go the four different types of yarn a holics! Which am I most certainly the last one and probably also Yarn Specific at this point in time. I have also been the Yarn Thrifter. I would love to be the Yarn Elitist but due to budget constraints will probably never make it there for very long. Which are you?

Talk to you later,

Karen

Reclaiming yarn is an old practice; an old way of finding new to you yarn. Our grandmother’s and great-grandmothers would often frog (or deconstruct) sweaters to help save money and reclaim the yarn for a new use. I have been wanting to get out and search in the thrift shops, resale shops and goodwill for some lovely wool yarn in some out of style sweaters. It is too late into Spring to find wool sweaters in Oklahoma. IF people wear wool sweaters where you live then you stand a much better chance of finding wool to reclaim. Find the Goodwill or thrift store that has wealthier client donators for the better quality sweaters. So many sweaters these days are cut and sewn which doesn’t frog without a knot every row.

I did, however, find cotton sweaters with nice stripes and lovely yarn. I spent the evening taking apart (frogging) a cotton rag sweater with lovely red and white cotton yarn. It would look wonderful as a scarf or possibly as crochet edging on a baby blanket. I haven’t decided. I only have one sleeve left to unravel (frog) and then it will be washed and dried on the line outside. Taking it apart took a bit of patience and some tv filled evenings. Once I figured it out the unravelling went quickly.

I haven’t decided what to do with them. The orange is glorious and soft. I have about four sweaters left to unravel. I paid wonderful end of season prices for them as the tag shows and it was 1/2 off the lowest red price. It wasn’t hard to reclaim the yarn but the texture of the yarn is not quite what I wanted. I’m not sure why.

Pros and Cons of Reclaiming Yarn

Cons

It can be odd colors, not all the time but if you wait too late.
It can be frustrating at times to unravel it.
It can dirty to work with, if the previous owner didn’t clean the sweater before donation, at the least just dusty from years of neglect.
It can take longer than you want reclaiming it, washing it and letting it air dry before you use it.
You can have yarns that are out of style.

Pros

It keeps good quality yarn out of the landfill
It recycles it and gives it a new life.
it is an inexpensive way to get new yarn for low $
You can get colors and textures not available to the general public
It is sometimes a higher quality than what you can buy. I found that the reclaimed yarn had more interesting textures than what I could find in my neighborhood craft stores.

What to do

Stick with wool yarn in good quality sweaters
Read all the articles you can about reclaiming sweaters
Stick with colors you love and yarns you are dying to use

It is now 2016. I would add that the orange yarn is difficult to crochet as it is in strands and has very low twist to it. I am not sure if that is a result of the deconstruction process or just the way the yarn was spun. The red yarn has been fun to work with and is now being used as ties for my Etsy shop packages. I did use quite a bit in a couple of crocheted scarves. The blue made the most adorable, soft baby blanket. In retrospect, I would only reclaim the yarn of wool sweaters. The cotton can be more difficult to find a use for. Here are a photo of a cotton scarf created from the reclaimed yarn.

Here I was playing with the red and white cotton rag to see what it would make up as. I like the shell stitch I used here but the edges are a little wonky. I will frog this and start over.

Talk to you later,

Karen

If this is something that you are interested in doing…here is where I learned how to reclaim the yarn from old sweaters; http://chaoticcrafter.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/reclaiming-yarn-from-a-thrift-store-sweater/

Tag: knit

Yarn-aholic

Reclaiming yarn