How to Get Yarn From Sweaters
Thrift stores and garage sales can yield surprising riches of high-quality yarn in the form of old sweaters. If a sweater has been sewn together using yarn rather than sewing thread, you can unravel it and use the yarn again. Taking a sweater apart to harvest the yarn requires a familiarity with how handmade sweaters are seamed. If you separate the seams running up the sides of the sweater, underneath the sleeves and down the shoulders, you can break down the pieces and re-knit the yarn.
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Instructions
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Turn the sweater inside out and flatten the seam running up one of the sleeves.
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Insert the tip of the seam ripper under the strand of yarn holding the bottom edges of the cuff together. Break the yarn and pull the cuff apart. Pull the two edges of the sleeve apart a few stitches at a time, breaking the yarn between them with the seam ripper as necessary.
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Take apart the remaining seams of the sweater in the same manner. Work up the underside of both sleeves, down both sides from armpit to waistband and across the shoulders, from sleeve to neck. Most sweaters will require undoing these six seams.
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Snip the hems at the bottom edges of the two cuffs and the waistband, and begin to unravel the yarn, winding it into balls as you go. You should end up with four balls of yarn -- one for each sleeve, one for the front panel and one for the back panel.
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Unwind the balls into hanks by wrapping the yarn around two chair backs, an umbrella swift, a friend's arms or your own arm from hand to elbow. Tie the hanks together at four points using pieces of scrap yarn. Wrap each piece of scrap yarn all the way around the hank and tie it in a bow or a knot.
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Fill a sink with wool wash and soak the hanks of yarn for several hours to relax the kinks. Rinse the hanks and hang them to dry. Wind the yarn into balls again before knitting it.
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Tips & Warnings
Choose only sweaters with hand-sewn seams to take apart. If the seams are sewn with sewing thread, the knitting has been cut and the sweaters have been serged together. Serged sweaters will not unravel in one continuous strand -- instead, they will fall apart into small bits of yarn, rendering the yarn unusable.
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