the middle knitter

I am pretty much the definition of a poor college student, so when I discovered that you can buy used sweaters and unravel them for yarn, I jumped all over the concept. And when I stumbled across a few old Frankenknits columns in the Knitty archives, I was very taken by the idea of recycling old clothes and making them into something new. (By the way, I think it's really a pity that the Frankenknits blog hasn't updated since last September.)

Anyway, I started buying up wool sweaters from Goodwill almost immediately, but it took me a while to be able to identify what sort of sweaters will work out for unraveling, and which ones will produce nasty yarn that's too thin and fragile to knit with. In particular, I got this one striped sweater, which in addition to being striped (hello very short pieces of yarn!), had been worn enough that it was ever so slightly felted around the seams, which made unraveling difficult.

The sweater itself was still good, though, and I really needed a small bag to shove my keys into when I'm poking around campus. So, inspired by this Frankenknits column in particular, I set out with the sections of yarn I had unraveled and the disassembled pieces of sweater, and this is what happened:

I'm actually kind of proud of the construction. This is made from the sweater's sleeves. I took two middle sections of the sleeves and cut them out carefully. The bottom edged is joined with a three needle bindoff. Having a seam right down the middle of the bottom is really not ideal, but it was just the way the bag worked out. Fortunately, nothing heaver than my keys and handkerchief and maybe the occasional paperback will ever be carried in the bag, so it works.

Anyway, once I'd joined the two pieces, I bound off the live stitches along the top edge, and then accidentally discovered how to crochet a seam up the sides. The cool part, though, is that the shaping of the sleeves meant that the bag tapered quite a bit from the bottom edge to the top. When I poked the corners inside of the bag and tacked them down, the bag went from being a funky tapered pouch to a gracefully shaped little purse about two inches deep. I was impressed.

I'm terrible about taking in-progress pictures, because I'm usually too excited to get it done. But here's a picture of what was left of the sweater after I made the bag. I want to see if I can use the front and back of the sweater to make a larger, messenger-style bag, but before I can I have to find a better way to felt things than by hand in my dorm room sink. (Another thing about being a college knitter: laundromats are not conducive to felting.)

And here's a detail that shows off the super-fun star buttons as well as how the fabric changed after I felted it:

This marks my first felting project (although I'm not sure it counts since I didn't knit it myself), and I learned a few things, but all in all I'm pleased with the result.

Also, while I'm talking about recycled knitting, look at what I picked up in Goodwill this weekend!

The dark red sweater on the left is a super-soft angora/wool/acrylic blend that is already earmarked for presents for my trip to Rome over Christmas, and the green sweater on the right is gorgeous, soft 100% merino wool. It makes me melt every time I touch it, and if it were any other color I wouldn't even be taking it apart--I'd just wear it. But, it's a super-super-bright lime green, much brighter than the picture shows. So the yarn there is destined for Dulaan knitting. (It's like somebody commented to me before school ended, "I thought they could use some bright colors in Mongolia!")