Reclaiming yarn: a waste of time?
I was reading a thoroughly good book recently – The Power of Knitting: Stitching Together Our Lives in a Fractured World. In it, author Loretta Napoleoni, a global expert on terrorist financing and money laundering, describes how she seeks out knitwear from thrift stores and carefully deconstructs the items in order to reclaim the yarn.
Reading this was a pivotal moment in my own crafting life. Despite dabbling and creating, remaking and refashioning all manner of items for a number of years, it had never occurred to me to take apart an already knitted item, wind the wool back into hanks or balls, and start again from scratch.
I have since discovered that, unsurprisingly, YouTube provides hours’ worth of deconstruction techniques. But there’s nothing like going through the process yourself to learn on the job, as it were. Again, unsurprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be one definitive way in which to reclaim yarn, but the process, which requires time and patience, does raise a few obvious questions.
Question 1: Why bother?
In Loretta’s case, a life of privilege and wealth unravelled when she was left to clear up enormous debts created by her ex-husband (who had disappeared). Having always been a knitter (learning, like many of us, at the hands of an older female relative), she established cheaper ways of obtaining expensive yarns. A 50gm ball of 100% cashmere, for example, is an eye-watering amount for most people (I checked online and saw prices up to £40 a ball!).
Question 2: Isn’t it sacrilege to ‘destroy’ an item that’s already been created using valuable resources and labour?
Let’s stay with the thrift-store scenario, and let’s stick with cashmere as an example. One has to be exceedingly lucky to find a cashmere item in A1 condition at a reasonable price. I know this from experience, and I’m sure the lovely Jane (Trash Chic founder) would agree. Perhaps the item you have found doesn’t fit you. Or, more commonly with cashmere, maybe there are small moth holes in it or signs of wear that don’t make it viable as a complete item. Would it then be sacrilege to turn the sleeves into, say, fingerless gloves and the body into a neck warmer or beanie – highly usable items? And what if you could, by some miracle, reclaim a couple of decent-size balls of yarn to make something else? Keep in mind the money you paid for the item in the first place is still part of the retail economy or contributing to a charitable cause.
Question 3: OK, clever clogs, what if you completely waste a good cashmere item because you mess up with your experiment?
Yip. Excellent point! I paid £4.99 for a jumper that was too big for me, a little bit thin in places, and a little stained in others. I’ll be 100% honest here and say that my attempts to reclaim the yarn failed miserably. The warnings were all there on YouTube: cashmere, particularly fine cashmere, is hard to unpick. The yarn broke constantly as I applied even the slightest pressure to pull it away and wind it. I should have started with a thicker knit in a conventional bottom-up shape. And next time (yes, there will be one!), I will. And hats off to those of you out there who have succeeded in reclaiming cashmere in this way.
Question 4: So you did …? You wasted a completely good item?
Actually, no. I didn’t. But I did have to swap to Plan B. The deconstructed pieces of my garment were very fragile. So I put them into a drawstring bag, chucked the whole lot in a hot wash and ended up with extremely usable non-fray felted pieces. I ended up making and decorating a couple of glasses cases. And I have enough felted pieces left to make a six-piece beanie plus matching fingerless gloves. These will be ready to gift as needed. To complement them, I will search through TC’s collection of scarves, which will be used as furoshiki (the Japanese art of using beautiful fabrics as re-usable wrapping).
Question 5: And your conclusion?
You can watch and listen to other people’s thrifting stories – there are plenty of them out there. But you never really know until you’re hands on with the particular garment you have in front of you. I was patient and careful with my cashmere item, but I knew when to give up on my original plan and regroup. Knitting, stitching, creating … it’s in my blood. My time is never wasted on projects like this and I usually manage something usable at the end of it. So be brave and embrace those yarn experiments. You never know what will come from them.
Sandra Stafford is a writer, editor and long-time Trash Chic customer.
To view TC’s range of preloved scarves that can be used as furoshiki, return to the Shop and wrap your gifts within another gift.
