Recycling

I got this poncho as a gift from my parents, several years ago. It was back when ponchos were enjoying their moment in the sun, their 15 minutes of fame. I would like to say I was never a fan of the style, but my wardrobe begs to differ (I have a gorgeous, hand crocheted black poncho made for me by my mother in law, which I love and wear a lot. But it was hand made. And from my MIL. And black never looks bad). The problem with this particular ponch is the length - too short. I obviously suffer quite a lot with short clothing (as my mohair cardi testifies...). This thing just hung off my boobs as if they were a shelf. For shame.

So I let it fester in a cupboard for several years. I don't know what I was hoping for... maybe that it would move out in the night?

Here we are in 2007. I am not buying any more yarn this year (I have my fingers crossed that Ma & Pa have bought me yarn for Christmas - my dad tried to engage me in a conversation about colours of Twilleys Freedom, which was very bizarre and suggests to me he was digging for information... anyways...) so I thought I'd try and recyle the ponch. I attacked it with some scissors, following advice I read in the Frankenknits section of Knitty (www.knitty.com). First I removed the tassles. Then I unpicked the seams - essentially this garment is 4 big blocks of knitting joined together, so unravelling it all was easy. I ended up with 4 large balls and a couple of small balls of this funky yarn - some of it is like roving, it's just actual unspun wool, and then it turns into a really thin, almost 3 ply consistency. Weird. There is just about every colour ever involved here too.

So I knit myself a hat and scarf. I didn't bother about patterns as the yarn is so funky, any sort of pattern stitch would've been entirely wasted. Here is a hat adapted from a pattern from Knitting Pattern Central, knit initially on 5mm needles, and then on 6mms for the main body of the hat (which is plain old reliable stockinette).

I wasn't entirely happy with how the hat turned out - basically the needles were too small. I used 10mm needles for the scarf (which is k1, p1 over 20 stitches all the way up, simple yet effective) which has a far better tension, so I'm thinking with the remaining yarn I might re knit the hat on 7mm/8mm needles. Then I can give the hat to someone or sell it or something.

This was an eyeopener. Imagine how much I could save on yarn if I just recycle old stuff I buy in charity shops or something? It was easy, and I got so much yarn for very little effort.

That said, I am weak. I like the process of going in a yarn shop and touching everything, and imagining it all knit up. It's going to be an expensive new year... especially if Ma & Pa don't come up with the Twilleys....