Where my recycled cashmere comes from

It has always been my habit to shop in charity shops. For the past few years I have been buying up cashmere wherever I find it, at a reasonable price- I have paid anything from between £1-£10 for a cashmere jumper.

Above are some of the labels from garments which I have recycled.

I take the knitwear apart carefully- there are tutorials on how to do this elsewhere on the internet. Generally speaking good quality garments can be successfully recycled because a) the fibre is stronger and b)the pieces are knitted separately.

However, I came across a Dolce and Gabbana sweater the other day with serged seams- in other words, the  pieces had been cut out of knitted material,and the seams sewn together with an overlocker.

If you try to unravel a serged garment all you end up with is lots of little lengths of yarn.

As most cashmere sweaters use yarn too fine for handknitting, once I have unravelled all the pieces and am left with lots of little balls of yarn, I ply 2,3 or even 4 strands together, depending on what I want to use the yarn for.

I then wind the yarn into skeins and handwash it, as hot as I can bear- I think this has the effect of ever so slightly felting the cashmere making it stronger.I leave it to dry naturally et voila, cashmere enough for a hat, scarf, pair of gloves or for use in colourwork at a fraction of the shop price.

Lots more about recycling yarn on youtube and Ravelry- there's an Unraveller's group.

04/10/2020

Recently obtained two cashmere jumpers for £1 each- incredible! One of them had no label, but I could tell just by touching that it was the real deal. There are some very good acrylics and blends containing angora which resemble cashmere, but it has a 'loft' that is unmistakeable.Dismantling and unraveling is not a task you can hurry- the trick is, to find the end of the chain stitching and pull, without making any holes in the fabric, until you have deconstructed the item. And you have to be relaxed because the thread is so fine, it will break, if you aren't. Watching TV is perfect for this.Each sweater yields about 5 good sized balls of  useable handknitting yarn, when plied together- four strands makes a light DK weight perfect for hand kniting. I make it into skeins and wash it by hand, wind it into balls when its dry.

I think a few people will be getting fairisle berets for Christmas!

Two felted cashmere sweaters which will be used for something else- a blanket or poncho, maybe?

Retrieved from 2 sweaters, for grand sum of £2- 10 balls of  4ply cashmere to make things with!

I made a bag with felted squares incorporated into the design for 'Inside crochet,' It was made using  green machine knitted lambswool from a cushion cover and DK cottons from my stash , so I called it the 'Granny Smith' bag. I was still relatively new to ctrochet at this point in time- that is the beauty of it, you can experiment, and don't have to be an expert to come up with original designs

Definitely going to revisit this method at some point.

30/5/21

Had a great find in a Charity Shop, a Muji cardigan, 50% wool and 50% yak!There were some moth holes in the sleeve so it was very cheap.I unravelled it carefully and wound it into an aran weight yarn.I might make my son a pair of crochet felted slippers with it, using a pattern from a vintage Patons book.It dates from the 1920sor 30s, I think, but these have a kind of mediaeval look, don't they?