You hear a lot of people talking about using Cascade 220 superwash wool. It comes in a lot of colors, is relatively affordable.

But that’s all there is to recommend it. It’s very blah yarn. The wonderful, natural wool characteristics have been ripped from these sad fibers and what you have is lifeless, convenient yarn.

I bought three balls of slightly deep red Cascade 220 when I first got into knitting a year or two ago. I was going to make myself a neat scarf. I like red, and this seemed like a logical choice for yarn. It was recommended by my LYS proprietor. I have tried to use it on three projects so far but it’s crappy.

I’m working on a lace scarf for my niece using it. I have recently become amused by the way the holes and pattern open up as you knit lace, and thought this would be a fun experiment and a way to use up this red yarn. But as I use it I am realizing that this is overrated yarn. Along with being eroded and lifeless, it looks very dull, and on top of that I find that the dye doesn’t fully penetrate they strands in all places. Probably does for 99.5 percent, but I find here and there that some inside fibers that are lighter or even white.

For texture I liken it to the Peaches and Cream brand cotton yarn I used for some other projects. It is very “soft” but not like alpaca, which is NICE soft. This is soft because it has been stripped of most of its natural wool characteristics. I’m also somewhat intuitive and the vibe I get from this superwash is like the difference of vibe between bleached cotton and unbleached cotton. The natural-state fibers are so much more alive.

The superwash process creates a wool yarn you can theoretically put in the washer without it fulling. It does this by chemically removing or coating over the scales on the wool fibers so they can’t catch on each other and tangle. The fibers in Cascade 220 are clearly eroded and thinner. They are softer because they are thinner, and thus feel rather lifeless for wool. The tactile sense is important to me for fibers as that is the spirit and heart of the sensory experience of a fabric.

As I mentioned in another post, I am phasing out all synthetic yarns, and now any superwash – which I will be calling “superdead”. Cascade 220 is for me the overcooked vegetables of the yarn world. Eventually I will get away from synthetic dyes and maybe even dye my own with natural substances. I really like single ply yarn as it look so old fashioned. To me that is real yarn.

Got a little yarn for a tiny project? Do you like to carry crystals or other lucky/healing stones in your pocket or purse, but don’t want them damaged by coins and other hard things in there with them? Knit a crystal cozy! These would make great mini-gifts for friends as well.

They are about 2.5 to 3 inches long. Make yours to fit your stone plus and inch or more so the ribbing can close the opening

It’s really simple. I suggest you use all natural fibers, preferably wool, to allow the crystal vibes unimpeded. I knit it all in k2p2 ribbing and it snugs around the stone perfectly, preventing it from slipping out with the coins and other pocket dangers. Wool has better springiness in ribbing.

Measure the circumference of your stone and determine how many stitches you need to fit around it. With something so small you can just do a test and not worry about wasting time. One if my stones is about three and a half inches around and 24 stitches fit around it fine, done in worsted wool on size six US needles.

I knit mine using magic loop and cast on with Judy’s magic cast-on and knit “toe up”. Alternately, you could start at the cuff and then graft the “toe” shut, or you can use my cast-off seam method where you use a third needle to knit two together (one from each needle), slip the loop back to the left and knit three more together (one from each needle and the slipped-back loop) until cast off completely. When you are done if you don’t like the look of the bottom end turn it inside out and see if it looks better that way, as it’s completely reversible.

If you work cuff downward to the toe you may want to decrease a few stitches for the last few rows to taper the end a little and make it more rounded. Use your imagination. Again, I did mine toe up, and so the cast-off wouldn’t be too tight I added an M1 every third stitch in the last row before casting off and found this made the opening flare a bit like a flower bud and that looked nice.

I did my first two in red wool but experience has me recommend you use lint colored yarn!

I’ve written some about my frustrated experiences with trying to recycle yarn, but I ran across this idea for another way to give new life to old, ruined wool sweaters: full/felt the hell out of them and turn them into knitting baskets, basket liners or bags! If you have one or find one at the thrift store that you like but it doesn’t look like a good candidate for frogging to reuse the yarn, just reuse the whole thing. Throw it in a pillow case and put it through a hot, soapy wash and then cut and stitch to make your new item. I was going to knit a few such projects and full them myself but this is a great, time saving alternative, and it gives new life to a sweater someone will probably never buy or really want to wear if they do buy it. Less wool in the landfills?

Check out the inspiration for this idea.

To my readers and subscribers: I do enjoy your “patronage.” If you like my blog, please forward some links to my site to your knitting pals. Thanks!

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Yes,  I own some Wool-ease, which is mostly acrylic. I don’t really like it. I bought it when I was new to knitting. It will be okay for some projects, but I really prefer natural fiber, and my real preference is naturally dyed or naturally colored fiber.

So I have some yarn that I balled with my ball winder and now I’ve forgotten if it is all wool or not. I found on the web you can test a scrap by putting some of the yarn in a cup with some undiluted bleach overnight and if it is all wool there will be pretty much nothing solid left.

BUT – brain on – a much faster test is to take a two feet of it if its worsted, or an equivalent amount in other weights, and try to felt it by rubbing it into a ball in a bath of hot, soapy water. If it’s a feltable fiber like wool you will know within minutes, and without chemicals, fire hazards or nasty smells. The less wool in it the less it will felt. Do a test of something you know is wool for comparison if you are not sure it’s felting as well as it should.

There is a burn test if you don’t mind your home smelling line burnt hair or plastic. Visit this link to read about it. What, no takers?

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(Be sure to see part 2 of this topic at this link)

Well, I made a trip to our local Savers Thrift Department store to look for decent wool sweaters from which to recycle the yarn. I thought this would be a great, economical way to obtain several skeins worth of yarn for just about $6. In general, I do believe recycling yarn can be a worthwhile endeavor, but I don’t think it’s for me. The reality of the hunt is not worth the result, which today resulted in more awareness than wool.

First thing I did was examine the 20 feet of men’s sweaters. Feeling along the edges of them for something that might be wool, as well as looking for sweaters that are mostly a solid color I discovered a few things about the sweater search that I don’t care for.

1. I don’t want to spend an hour pawing through hundreds of used sweaters. My time is worth more. On top of that I partially reinjured my mostly healed sprained finger sliding sweaters around on over-burdened racks.
2. Many of the sweaters are not solids, so you can’t get long runs of yarn out of them.
3. Some of them are sewn from cut steeks and can’t be unraveled in continuous strands.
4. Precious few haven’t been partially felted. I don’t know if Savers is washing these or the previous owners are the monster yarn murderers. Even one short wash will make the strands look very second hand, and I don’t want a new garment to look pre-owned from the get go. Also, a bit of felting will make it harder to pull out the stitches.
5. Some have stains. Do I want to spend $X on dry cleaning it before I cannibalize it? Not unless it’s a great looking yarn. Great looking yarn is very rare in situation.
6. Few of them are colors I want to work with. Do I really need that much DK weight, red yarn in 60% lambswool, 20% acrylic and 20% angora rabbit? It was almost the only one I found that wasn’t partially felted and had any potential. Do I know anyone who wants a bunch of socks made from this? I certainly don’t.

In the end I went up to the check out with a smallish, woman’s sweater in a bulky roving-type yarn that was dark gray and black mix. It was 20 percent alpaca, 70 percent wool and 10 percent acrylic, with cotton embroidery and the right kind of seams. I thought I could maybe get some yarn for a decent hat and scarf out of it. I waited a rather long time in line, observing the checker struggle four times trying to get the card swiper to work for a customer ahead of me, as well as other complications with the people in line. Having had this time to reflect on the whole, slummy experience, I turned around, put the sweater back where I found it and left empty-handed but with an armful of awareness.

Recycling yarn is more akin to hand-me-down-ism than you realize. You don’t have much of a choice. You have to decide if you want to make anything from what you do find that is decent. Do you like the color and the yarn? Will anyone else. It was kind of depressing to think I might get stuck with some yarn I don’t love and am not inspired by, and then drag myself through a project I know I’m going to want to give away, knowing it’s not just a gift, it’s getting rid of the stuff. I don’t want to give that kind of vibe to others, and I don’t want to keep it, a souvenir of the dismal fate of so many sweaters and a disappointing search.

You may have much better luck and spirit about yarn recycling that I do. To me though, after what I saw today, it’s more akin to picking at a trash heap than finding treasure. I want to feel better about the process of finding the yarn and its condition. I also prefer not to feel like I’m knitting in a compromise due to poverty. I can afford yarn, and even if I make the effort buy it cheaper online, at least it’s not what to me would feel like reclaimed junk.

Be sure to see part 2 of this topic at this link

You can get some great things at thrift stores. My favorite chair and a marble topped occasional table came from there, and a couple of vests I have. And I did have one super sweater find a couple of years ago, before I ever considered knitting: a fair isle sweater in 100% alpaca, NEW, in colors I love, for just $7. It is one of my cherished possessions. Here it is:

The suggested retail for this brand of 100% alpaca sweater was $150 for a solid color, and this one is multicolor fair isle. Maybe $250?