Unraveling Sweaters for Wool

[westcoastlady]

I've often heard of people unravelling sweaters (machine made... not handmade) or other storebought items to use the wool for other projects. I have tried it twice, once with a sweater and once with a pair of mitts, and both times it didn't work. The wool was really fragile. When I would pull to unravel... it would just break apart. I've started to think that maybe they use different wool for machine knitting. Or maybe I've just had bad luck??

Has anyone had any success with this? What am I doing wrong??

[texmati]

I do this! Or I did, pre kids. there was a great tutorial on this a while back. I'll see if I can pull it up.

You do have to pick the right sweaters.

[texmati]

Here it is!

Always make sure that the sweaters you get have a sort of chunk yarn. At least what you would knit socks with.

It's a great way to get a sweaters worth of yarn without a lot of cash layout.

[Liberty5_3000]

I just started doing this a couple weeks ago. I bought one thrift store sweater to experiment with and it came apart just fine. I was nice, soft alpaca yarn, so I'm quite excited to have it for just $4. I will be keeping my eyes open for more sweaters to unravel. I hope you have better luck if you try again.

[cristeen]

Certain types of yarn are definitely more difficult. You want to pick a sweater that doesnt have a halo. While that halo is pretty and soft, it impedes frogging. You also want to check for stitch definition. If the stitches are so tiny you cant easily see them, move on. The smaller the stitch, the thinner the yarn. Also check to make sure theres no felting under the arms and around the neck would be the most likely area. And finally, check the seams to make sure it is sewn together w yarn and not serged together.

Ive only actually completely frogged one, a fair isle that was knit w a chunky yarn, so it was pretty easy, but ive partially frogged a couple others, and some are certainly more difficult.