Making recycled yarn new again

Once we get yarn from our sweater, the challenge is to entangle it

I used a steam technique to make the yarn new again

I put each skein in the vegetable basket of my giant pot

Put some water to steam inside the pot

Steam reach the yarn in the basket

Left the yarn there 3 times 20 minutes, letting the steam reaching all area of the yarn

Put yarn to dry around the umbrella to straight it out

Then put back in skein

Yarn is magically untangled and like new again

Dyeing recycled yarn

Got a few samples of the yarn for the 2 sewater, enough to play around with dye

Now I am experimenting with dye not nowing how the yarn will appear after dyeing

With the light grey yarn

With the off white yarn

Well it is interesting colors are not the same as indicated on the label

On the right the original color from label

On the left the color with the grey yarn

On the right the original color from label

On the left the color with the off white yarn

Well now let's untangle the unravelled yarn

2 sweaters into plenty of yarn to unravel, dye and knit again

Went shopping and brough back 2 very large sweaters, none of them I would even wear.

WHAT!!!!

Yes, I don't buy any sweater any more, only if I can reuse the yarn later.

I like to buy sweaters from expensive stores at 80% off and unravel the yarn.

I look for 

- good quality sweaters

- dk weight yarn are my favorite 

- no surger finish, like in this picture otherwise it will be a torture to unravel

- merino blend, 100% is the best but it is hard to find so the highest % is the best

Once you have the right sweater, you just have to find the right threat and pull. 

It will easily separate all parts of the sweater

Once you have your sweater in a few pieces, you can star to unravel

Note thar you usually start to unravel at the top of each pieces not at the ribbing

Little by little make it into a ball

And soon you will a few balls of great yarn

Next we will see how to color, untangle and finally knit it in a new project...