Recycling of Yarn

 Well, actually, this is an afghan that I started recycling last year...pulling out more than two/thirds of the wool and turned it into yarn cakes.  This one of the three yarns I used for the Love Knots Blanket project.  The last third of the blanket was on the couch.  

I have semi-volunteered to do another test knit, but this time I told the designer right up front that I would not be able to finish on time so she could choose to include me or not.  She emailed me back to say that the size I want to knit is possibly not going to be chosen but someone else to knit  so she might be able to use me anyway.  We shall see.  This is the yarn I will use.  REALLY trying to use it up!

This is Hilda Yates' yarn, spun and dyed by Bartlettyarns Mill in Harmony, Maine.  I have used the same yarn many times over past years but now my taste in yarn is gradually shifting to finer/lighter-weight yarn.  Of course, this means smaller needs and longer lives to the projects but the item in my lap will not be anywhere near as heavy.  I feel like a complainer/baby when I say that but it does begin to make a difference.

Reclaiming Baby Sock Yarn

 You will remember those baby socks I just knit and how they were different sizes because of differences in my knitting on those days.  Well...I just could not give them as gifts when they were so clearly not good.  SO...I did a sock yarn reclamation project.

1.  Find the end of the yarn where you wove it in.  This time it was at the toe where I Kitchenered them together.  It was fairly easy to find for three of the four socks but eventually I found the fourth one...possibly doing this in the middle of the night was the issue here!

2.  After unraveling each sock, wind each pile of crinkle-y yarn around a piece of sturdy cardboard. 

3.  Using some cotton yarn, tie the yarn together in at least two places.  Since this was such a small amount of yarn, I just did it in two places.  With heavier yarn and a greater quantity of yardage you will need to put in at least 4 ties.  The whole point of this is so the yarn will not become impossibly tangled during the next steps. It WILL do that if you don't tie it up very well.

4.  Drop the tied-up yarn into a bowl of warm water and let it sit at least 30 minutes so the water can really soak into the wool.

(You can see the white cotton wraps.)

5. Drain the water out of the bowl then gently squeeze out as much water as possible.

6.  Hang the yarn on a hanger.  Put a straight piece of something, in this case a knitting needle, through the bottom of the yarn bundles then add a weight...in this case a shirt on a coat hanger.  If you have worsted weight wool, you will probably need a heavier weight to pull out the "wrinkles" in the yarn.  For this fine yarn, what we have is sufficient.

7.  Let the yarn completely dry, then wind into a ball or cake as you choose.  (We are not at that step yet...!). You are then ready to use the yarn again.

The whole point of this is to get the crinkles out of the yarn so your knitting will be smooth.  If you do NOT do this and just reuse the yarn after frogging it, you will have a knit project with an unpleasing appearance and texture.  Ask me how I know...!

Recycling Project: Floor Mat

We have found some scraps of carpeting from one of the new houses in the development.  Well, actually, I was on another dump-picking run early one morning and brought home a roll of it.  The two small rectangles went into the man cave (so-called!) to protect our own carpet from sweaty feet.  The long strip of carpeting went into the garage.  It is a very nice addition there!

As it happens, I spend a great deal of time at the table in the workroom and my feet are often really hot from the outside work.  I thought I might use some of the bed sheet strips I had made several months ago since the crocheted rug they had been prepared for was not moving along very fast.

To make this floor mat,  I took four strips of about 1 1/2" wide bed sheets and folded them over.  With a biggish crochet hook (maybe a K?) and two strands of worsted weight cotton yarn I worked single crochets around the folded strips.  When I got to the end of a row (as wide as I thought it should be), I worked two more single crochets then folded the strips back the other direction, inserted the crochet hook into the previous row's single crochet under both strands and worked single crochets all the way back. 

When I had had enough of this crocheting, and also because basically I was out of fabric strips and did not want to stop to tear more, I just decided it was a floor runner, not a floor mat or rug!

It works just fine.  Once I do stop forward progress on other projects, I will tear more strips and add to the width of the mat.  It does work just fine now, but would be better another section or two larger.

Recycling at its Most Humble

Since coming here to South Carolina I have been thrilled to find that recycling is part of the Wednesday trash pick up.  Still, there are some things that those nice men do NOT want to pick up.  Grocery bags is one of those non-pick-up-able items.  What to do, what to do?

This is what I do:

Pretty ugly but it works well.  When I get half a dozen grocery bags, I insert them one inside another and put them into the trash bins.  Since all our trash receptacles are small ones, this works perfectly.  AND we never have to buy garbage bags.  Win-win! 

Plus I never feel like I have to completely fill the garbage bag before pulling it out, tying it up, and tossing it in the big 90-gallon rolling bin outside.

Recycling at its Best!

It turns out that Dear One was not actually enamored of the giant blue Bartlettyarns afghan I made to celebrate the addition on our home in Vermont and the wonderful new great room with queen-sized-hide-a-bed sofa so long ago.  This turned out to be in one of the boxes we brought to South Carolina.  It seemed like a perfect project for recycling.  There is so much yarn in the afghan I should be able to make a sweater even for myself...

Because this was made back in the days when my hands still agreed with me and crocheting, to recycle this yarn I just had to find the end.  There were only four corners to try and, as luck would have it, I found the end at the first try.

As I started unwinding, I also began winding onto the back of one of our dining room chairs.  I did this over a period of about a month, until I didn't think I could take another moment, plus we had company coming for lunch and I wanted the job done by then.

You can see why I wanted to complete this part of the project before company came to lunch...!

After stopping the unwinding process I place ties around the huge skein of yarn in four places then dropped the work into the sink which I had filled with lukewarm water. I let the yarn soak for fifteen minutes or so then let the water out and squeezed the yarn a bit.

Out in the garage I found a walking stick and a piece of 2 by 6 I had pilfered from a trash bin at one of the building sites here...same thing we have under the "planters" on the deck!

After hanging on the deck for a week the yarn was mostly dry so I brought it into the house to get ready for the next part of the process: winding the yarn into a cake.  Well, it will be several cakes because there is so much yarn.

One note, there was still enough of the yarn in afghan form to have a lovely lap blanket so it is folded up and placed on the love-seat in the living room.  Assuming some day it might be cool enough for a bit of covering...

Wednesday Wonders

Living in the city was a new thing for us when we went to Oregon.  There were big trash bins and recycling bins in the apartment complex. At least once a week big old trucks came and dragged everything off.  When we lived in Vermont we had a compost pile.  We had a recycling bin on the east porch which we took to the recycling center every Saturday.  We had a trash man come to the end of our driveway.  Every two or three weeks we left a bag for him since we did not generate very much actual trash.

Here in South Carolina we have Wednesday trash pick up. Also Wednesday recycling pick up.  We have one bin for each of them.  There are VERY SPECIFIC rules about what can be picked up.

If there is corrugated cardboard to be picked up we need to call the Department of Public Works on Thursday to notify them that we have cardboard to be picked up, place the flattened cardboard ONLY (no paper, no plastic, no styrofoam, no fake wood that was in the box) at the curb BEFORE SEVEN AM, and most likely the cardboard picker-upper will come by sometime during the day as long as the cardboard cowboy comes by earlier and verifies that there is cardboard at the curb.

Today almost the last of our cardboard was taken away.  Yay!

The truck came and picked up a good-sized load from the curb.

And emptied it into the truck!  It will be great when all the cardboard is gone.  Did I say that the bug guy who came the other day told us that cockroaches just love cardboard?!!!  Well, that put an end to my collection of nice bankers' boxes and apple boxes with handles.  We will just get more if we need them at some distant time in the future, and JUST BEFORE we need them loaded!

Food Friday: Delicious Refrigerator Soup

There were more than usual small containers of leftovers in the refrigerator one morning lately so I pulled them all out of the refrigerator, tossed them into a large soup pot and, after chopping up three onions that I found in separate containers, I turned on the heat, brought the soup to a boil, then let simmer until the onions were mostly cooked.  It is a delicious soup.  Sadly, not to be duplicated....My mother was truly the master at making refrigerator soup.  Those soups always tasted good.  Sometimes mine have not been as tasty.  This one was BUT  Dear One had a bit of problem with it, though he did try.

These were the ingredients I used:

3 partial onions, chopped

1 bunch dried out scallions

2 cups homemade baked beans

1 1/2 cups homemade macaroni and cheese

2 cups roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflower

2 cups sautéed onions and spinach

1 quart pork broth

1 quart chicken broth

2 -3 Tablespoons French onion dip made with sour cream and French's Onion Soup mix

2 Tablespoons Harvest Blend Seasoning...basically dried vegetables and herbs

2 1/2 Tablespoons dried red bell pepper flakes

Ragu spaghetti sauce

Chopped the onions finer then began cooking them in the two broths and broths.  After about 2 minutes, just added everything except the dip and Ragu sauce and brought everything up to a boil then simmered until the raw onions were softened...well, 15 minutes, then an additional 6 minutes because the onions were not yet soft.

Handwork: Charity Knitting Project with Recycling Overtones

A couple of years ago I went to area thrift stores to find 100% wool sweaters that I could take apart for various projects.  At that time I wanted to make dryer balls instead of spending a lot of money for them.  I found a beautiful Ralph Lauren Polo Country pullover.    Eventually I pulled out the stitching at the shoulders with plans to use the sleeves for dryer balls.

Like so many of the "great ideas" that I have, this one turned out to be another failure.  The dryer balls from this sweater did not stay as balls.  When I was felting them they had dog ears and tails hanging off.  And that was just the problem with the balls themselves.  The main problem was that the dryer balls annoyed the other people drying clothes in our dryer.  Oh well.  Chalk it up to another idea which does not go over well with the rest of the family.

With no sleeves but a beautiful sweater body, I thought I could turn it into a vest with a little ribbing on the armholes.

The armhole with no ribbing in place

It was pretty easy to do.  The worst part was trying to find yarn to match the navy in the sweater. I had some Plymouth yarn that was pretty close and even had some wool in it. 

This is what I did:

Starting at the armpit, I picked up (with a crochet hook) 84 stitches more or less evenly spaced around the armhole. After putting on a marker to show where the beginning of the round started I did a K2, P2 ribbing for 5 rounds.  To bind off I used Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off(found at Knitty and also on YouTube if you prefer video tutorials) which I have discovered works very well.

Ribbing in place on first armhole

 

When I first decided to do this recycling project I intended to use this "new" vest myself.  I love the pattern and colors.  Well, how can you go wrong with navy and natural cream colors?  However,  the other night I was at a meeting of the women in our Church where the leaders made a call for winter clothing for some refugees in the area.  I am more than happy to give up this vest.  I can only wear one thing and a time and I already have a sweater for winter.  I am hoping to go through our house in the next two weeks and pull out all the winter clothes that can be cleaned and mended, if need be, to give away.  The refugees will be warm and, BIG BONUS: we will have an emptier house!