What Deals!

These are from last week's garage sales. There was a rummage sale at an elementary school in the next town and I found these for 25¢ each. From the top down, all in wool, are 1) a hand-knit aran in a cream bulky, 2) another aran in what looks to be a bit darker cream sport or DK weight, 3) a fair isle in 4 colors - dark cream, tan, brown & black worsted weight, 4) another fair isle in 3 shades of grey (dark, medium & light)plus a touch of red, and 5) a hand knit in grey & cream Lopi wool. I weighed the sack when I got home and there's close to 8 pounds of wool here for a total of $1.25!

The Lopi sweater (5) has already been frogged and I made a button-hole bag with part of the yarn. This is how it looked pre-felting. It's in the process of drying now.



The aran sweater (2) yielded 4 large and 1 small hank of yarn. I counted revolutions on the swift for the smallest skein and there are about 150 yards.



I've washed the hanks and they've dried and are now ready to be wound back into balls. I'm in the process of frogging the tan & brown fair isle (3). It came apart quite easily but with this much pattern work, I'm finding that the sections of yarn are fairly short (2-6 rows). I'm hoping that I will be able to splice the wool together with the Russian splice to avoid lots of knots in whatever I use it in - I'm thinking one of the Market Bags from Knitty if I can find one or two brighter colors to go with these earth tones. The grey fair isle is actually intersia so I may try to make a felted bag out of the body rather than trying to take it apart.

The one necklace turned into these stitch markers and I still have a lot of the beads left. (The one on the far right is from different beads.)

Jane at 8:45 PM :: |

Look at my latest find! This was on the clearance rack at Filene's, 100% CASHMERE! FROGGABLE! And, an unbelieveable deal because... (next picture please!) 

bensmumma at 1:47 PM :: |

This is why the sweater was only $11.88. Wow - I couldn't buy that much cashmere for $11 ANYWHERE! YEE HAW! 

bensmumma at 1:46 PM :: |

Sophie lives again! I finally picked it up this week and have made a bit of progress - in fact it's moving so quickly now that I'll probably finish in a couple of days. YAY! 

bensmumma at 1:45 PM :: |

Here is the inside, where I carried the white across the black sides. I think I will end up cutting and weaving in the ends, even though I'm felting the bag. I don't want it to be buckled . What do you think? 

bensmumma at 1:44 PM :: |

4.21.2005

I am *so* not doing this properly!

Charity shop wool- mmm... enough for a toddler garment- hand wash only, though!

Rosie at 3:00 PM :: |

I found this wool in a charity shop, and it looked quite interesting, so they let me have it plus the sweater made of it, and the green wool, all for £3. I thought the wool looked ok until I saw it knitted up- not sure what I can do with it. 

Rosie at 2:58 PM :: |

hmm... not sure about this wool 

Rosie at 2:55 PM :: |

After waiting several months for some half decent recyclable garment to show itself, I have had to resort to knitting plastic bags and crocheting round the edge of old doll's blankets. I am fairly pleased with the results though: a pegbag and a cushion. (amazing what is achievable when I have a day off the computer!).
Pegbag- Problem: I need a waterproof container for pegs that won't blow away or break when it inevitably falls off the line.
Solution:a knitted carrier-bag basket. It was made on the biggest needles I could find- about 12mm, in one straight piece with a cast on- cast off hole for a handle.

Rosie at 2:51 PM :: |

Cushion cover from reclaimed piece of crocheting (not quite finished).

Rosie at 2:38 PM :: |

4.14.2005

Recycle City

Thursday is garage sale day (actually along with Friday & Saturday, but who's counting) and the pickings are getting better. Here are today's finds - a total of $2.10..



The red & black sweater is a size L and 100% wool - it was $1. The blue sweater is acrylic and has a small hole in the front, but it's an XL and it was 10¢ - there's no way I can go wrong with that much acrylic yarn for a dime. The necklaces were 50¢ each and were originally destined to be taken apart for materials for stitch markers. The green & gold one is still going to be used that way, but I noticed that the large metal beads in the other one look like balls of yarn so for the time being I'm keeping that one whole to see if it will fit in with my wardrobe.

I have yarn now from three sweaters that I frogged earlier - a cream cotton & ramie blend, a green tweedy wool, and a navy blue wool. Now to find something to knit.

Jane at 10:22 PM :: |

Freecycle

This is an idea for obtaining old sweaters for free.

I put a post up on my local freecycle site asking for old wool sweaters. Today I had someone email me saying she had a few sweaters that she would give me. Hey, it's free - of course I'll take them. If I can't salvage the wool, I'll felt the sweaters and use them for mittens or something else.

More information on freecycle can be found here.

Uta

anyone at 7:58 PM :: |

Rip It. Rip It Good.

Lady Eleanor. Be still my heart.

Anne in Colorado
http://whitestarsams.blogspot.com

Anne at 1:38 AM :: |

4.13.2005

How to remove curls?

How do I remove curls from yarns that are not wool ? I have a lovely gold (ripped sweater) ribbon-yarn but I can't get the curls out. I tried with a small amount in really warm water and then stretched it to dry, but it didnt work...
What can I knit from curly yarn ?
I really don't want it to look as if my 5 year old daughter knitted it ;) (no I haven't tought her yet, she can't hold the needles and yarn together at the same time...)

/Ingela in Sweden

IngelaS at 10:46 AM :: |

4.12.2005

One mo' FO

This is the "Bear Poncho" from Interweave Knits issue Spring 2002. It was a lovely, fun knit. I have a temporary ribbon in place, I haven't chosen the perfect pink ribbon yet. Anyway, this is from a lovely 100% merino wool Banana Republic pullover.

BeanMama at 3:56 AM :: |

4.11.2005

Honeymoon Cami from Recycled yarn

As a reminder this is the cotton blend sweater I frogged for the yarn.


here's the yarn I got from the blend sweater



This is Julia's Honeymoon Cami from Knitty.com. It's a bit uneven, at the straps, but nothing I ever make is perfect, so I'm happy with it. It feels a bit heavy, so we'll see how it wears in the real hot weather. I made the straps a bit wider then the pattern, so it hides my unmentionables well. Overall, I'm really pleased with how it came out.

Azuredrake at 8:06 PM :: |

4.10.2005

Another newbie

Hi everyone, my name is Jesse, and I'm kinda lazy when it comes to posting, so I copied this exerpt from my blog, enjoy!


So, now that I have absolutely no money to buy any new yarn, I'm pretty much stuck with trying to use what I have on hand, oh joy. Feeling anything but inspired, I looked in my closet and pulled out this shetland sweater I bought from Goodwill a few months ago with the intention of recycling.


After a few episodes from season 2 of Six Feet Under, I ended up with this:
seven skeins of slightly scratchy shetland yarn in a ho-hum hue. (The alliteration is pretty good, though.)







So what does one do with bland yarn and a limited budget? We dye it, of course! And since I was feeling pretty down, I mixed colors at whim and came up with a really neat, absinthe-looking green, and used the cobalt blue straight out of the bottle. I put the dyes into Mason jars, crammed as much yarn into them as I could (which is suprisingly a lot) and set them in the canning pot I use for dyeing.

AND..........................................................

After 45 minutes of simmering and a whole night to cool down (you don't need the entire night; I was just really sleepy as it was three o'clock in the morning.) I got THIS!!!




Isn't it nice? It's not quite as bright as my screen shows it, but it's pretty close. Now as for what to do with it, I've already decided. I've even begun it, but I'm not going to tell because I want to show pictures and I'm to lazy to hop over to my laptop to retrieve the pictures, so I'll post later on this week with more pictures.

Addendum:

Pictures of the current project are now up on my blog

nmblefngrs at 5:47 PM :: |

4.09.2005

I'm new too!

Hello everyone!
I really love this ReKAL, I'm ripping sweaters and cutting plasticbags right now....
But in my experience not all plastic-bags are knittable :(
I prefer the ones that rustle, what is the proper english word ?

My blog is mostly in Swedish, Hello Mia ;)
Here is my photoalbum the folder "slaktobjekt" contains my felted and going-to-be ripped sweaters. The one with intarsia is 100% shetlandwoll, bought it on a second hand sale, but it is in my size so I don't have the heart to ripp it yet. We still have cold weather here in Sweden...
Bye for now, my knitting needles are calling ;) K

IngelaS at 8:48 PM :: |

One more Newbie into the mix....

Hi, my name is Jane & I'm a knit-addict. I normally work with acrylic yarns because of the cost factor, but since joining the blogging world, I've been wanting to experiment with felted bags without paying the rather high prices charged for new wool yarn. The garage sale season is just opening up for the year here in Michigan, and last week I found a ramie & cotton blend long sleeved, cropped cardigan for a dime - at that price and with four nice buttons, I decided I couldn't lose. I brought it home, disassembled it, wound the yarn into hanks, washed the yarn (which shrank) and now have it wound into balls. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'm thinking in terms of a raglan summer t-shirt, knit from the top down.

Yesterday, at another garage sale, I found a XL wool pullover for $2 and spent a good part of the afternoon getting it apart and wound into hanks. I'm at the point where it probably should be washed and hung to dry, but I'm a little worried about doing that, not being accustomed to working with wool, so any advice would be appreciated. There are pictures and more details on my blog, Plain Jane Knits

Jane

Jane at 4:06 PM :: |

4.02.2005

Finally -- a FINISHED OBJECT!

Have been amassing huge amounts of yarn for my stash. Lots of lovely cashmere, wonderfully soft merino wool and lambswool, some silk and silk blends. Positively yummy.

Word of Warning: When you're checking those seams, check under the arms, too. I've found a couple of sweaters that looked almost brand new and had gorgeous seams, only to look under the arms and find the yarn matted and felted. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time then wanting to use the yarn. Ew. When I cut that part out, I end up losing a huge portion of the back and arms and end up with maybe 1/3 of the yarn. And I still can't quite get the memory of the underarm matting out of my mind... again -- ew.


Anyway, this cardigan on my daughter is my very first intarsia project. It's pretty sloppy, but I learned a lot and it is a FO and I am so happy it's done. It's made from a 100% buttery soft wool in what we like to call Shrek Green. (From a HEAVILY cabled size XL pullover. I used one sleeve to make this.) The white in the poodles is from a lambswool/cashmere pullover, and the bits of black are from a Banana Republic merino wool cardigan. Even the buttons are from a hand-knit cotton cardigan I have yet to unravel.

100% REKAL. Beanmama -- I blog!

BeanMama at 10:02 PM :: |

Hi from another newbie...

Hello all-

My name is Amanda and I have been knitting for about a year (this May). I love to knit but have a limited budget so I look for clearance items from Old Navy, Target, Wal-mart pretty much anywhere where I can get cheap knitted things to make into something else. Also when I buy yarn I have to use every inch of that yarn. Currently, I am using little pieces to stuff a monkey I am making.

I live in the mountains in Colorado with my husdand and my newly adopted border collie Maverick. I'd love it if you'd stop by and say hello at ttbookjunkie knits !

Happy knitting all!
Amanda

ttbookjunkie at 3:18 AM :: |

 

Disclaimer: This KAL is in no way advocating Yarn Diets! Perish the thought! We simply want to open a new avenue to creativity.