Re-using Yarn : Unravelling - 12 August 2024

A friend gave me this sleeveless crocheted cardigan that she made ages ago and didn’t like. She told me I could do whatever I want with it and she knew I couldn't wear it because it would not fit me so she expected I would just unravel it to make use of the yarn in a different project.

You can only appreciate the stitch against a dark background. The stitch looks like leaves but not all the leaf shapes are alike : some are long and some are a bit shorter. Also some of the stitches are thicker than others which is to do with the yarn used rather than the crochet stitch.

The yarn is not a plain colour: there’s some turquoise and some very light brown flecks of colour. Sadly it is not a smooth yarn and the texture is achieved by having some thick and some very thin sections. I’ve read that’s called slub. My first thought is about using it for knitting rather than crocheting, but whatever I make will have uneven stitches.

_{Close-up of the yarn and colour.}

It made me feel a bit uneasy to just unravel this garment. I’m deeply aware of the effort in making clothes, but it’s better to unravel something rather than to throw it away. I started unravelling from the bottom of the garment because I found an end and it was also easy because the right front, back and left front were all made as one piece without seams. The only problem was the yarn; I had to coax the stitches to unravel them and this made the process a bit slower.

After unravelling the first two rows I thought I could perhaps just ‘save’ that leaf section and make it into a bag or something like that. I stopped unravelling from the bottom of the garment and started investigating and unpicking the shoulders to unravel from the top.

The photo above shows you a front shape and how small the size of the garment was. I continued unravelling and when the top section was done I decided to just unravel everything because I didn’t really think I could reuse the leaf section for anything that I’d personally use.

_{Crocheted work reduced to these balls of yarn.}

I put a plastic bowl on the scales, then I started the scales from ‘zero grams’. I added the yarn that this project yielded and as you can see, the little screen reads 218 g which is definitely not enough for a garment for my current size. I wondered whether or not to be totally cheeky and inquire if there was any more of the yarn. I decided not to do that, but I’m still wondering. I’m going to see what sort of bag I can make with this yarn.

Thank you for reading !