I went on a sweater hunt (a.k.a. treasure hunt) the other day at my favorite thrift store. I had some colors in mind and found the perfect sky blue and lavender and that I was hoping I'd find. I also had in mind to try to get "nicer" fibers than the usual cotton sweaters I tend to buy. These were 50% off so I spent less than $4 on them. :)

This gem is a silk, nylon, angora blend. I'm in love with the yarn that's being unraveled from this sweater! It's incredible soft and just oh-so-nice!

This one is made of angora and wool. It's soft... Though I'm a little iffy about the yarn from this one. It tends to break too easily for my liking. I've never really had an issue with yarn breaking and the fact that I'm able to break this while tugging at it a little more than usual worries me since I'm a weakling to begin with. I've never worked with angora or wool before so I'm not sure if it's the nature of this fiber or if the strands in this particular sweater are just weak due to a possible variety of reasons. My original reason for wanting this sweater was so that I could make a shawl but I'd hate for it to tear and break. I may experiment with felting instead, or maybe I'll knit with several strands together to give it some strength.

Here's a little bit about the method I use when harvesting yarn from sweaters.

I'm not sure what happened to all the wire hangers that we used to have in this house...they've just mysteriously vanished over the years! Because of that, I have only been able to find one wire hanger in recent history so it is put to use quite a bit (and due to it's demand, it makes my process even slower). Yeah, so point being, a bent hanger is very important to me.

Once I take the sweater apart and get the frogging started, I like to wrap the yarn around the hanger. Sometimes it's enjoyable, other times it is not! Onward, we go! Then I like to take my yarn adorn hanger and go to the sink. I get the yarn nice and wet and then I take shampoo, lather, rinse...and on some occassions I repeat. If the weathers nice, I'll hang the hanger outside and let it dry out there during the day. Otherwise I let it drip dry over the bath tub, or if it's no longer dripping it gets hung in an area of my room. Then I wind it by hand (blah!) into balls (or in most cases eggs). Ah, but the important thing is that I now know that the yarn is all nice & clean and kink-free! And then I have fun knitting as much as my defect wrist will allow.

The weaver's knot is going to be my new best friend. It's nearly invisible when used to join the cotton yarn (from the frogged sweaters!) that I've been using for my lace projects.