Eco knitting supplies

[MuddyWitch]

That's a brilliant idea, most charity shops have jumpers galore after xmas!!! You will find the hand-knitted ones are MUCH easier to pull down. Wind the crinckly yarn onto a frame made from bending a wire coat hanger into a squareish shape, (will try to take photo of my de-kinker to show you what I mean) & hold the steam near a boiling kettle. The steam "de-kinks" it.


MW

[snapdragon]

Nod nod, thrift shop / charity shop knitted items can be de-constructed.
either steam or drop skeins (tied loosely in two or three places) into very hot water with a tiny dab of dish detergent added, leave till the water has cooled a little and remove, hang to drip, if they're still a bit 'kinky' then while they're still wet add some weight to the bottom loop of the skein (a tin/can of soup or whatever should do it)

[ajs88]

http://www.guernseywool.co.uk

seems to be quite reasonable at 500g for £18, i've just started knitting and as i work near one, went into john lewis and paid £4 for 50g of aran, which i accepted for some experimentation but is completely unfeasible if im going to do it often

[rockchick]

I am a bit of a novice knitter and have now exhausted the book given to me when I was 8 (!) and am just waiting for a new book to arrive before i decide on my next project. I shall be referring back to these links in due course!

[the.fee.fairy]

Rockchick - hve a look at some of the online pattern sites too.
My favourites are:

www.knitty.com
www.theanticraft.com

Also, if you join Ravelry (www.ravelry.com) then there's hundreds of free patterns. You can search by type of thing you want to knit, type of yarn etc. There's downloads that you can buy too.

[Eco Girl]

I've unravelled jumpers from charity shops in the past. Wash them, dry them and wrap round a hot water bottle as you unravel and then most of the worst of the kinks come out.

Beware modern woollies, many are made from knitted sheets and then the pattern cut out as if from fabric. Obviously not useful for unravelling and making balls of wool out of.

Also if you can get cotton balls of 'wool' either new or second hand in light colours then dye them with natural plant dyes. I'm unpicking a shapeless and tragically hippy patchwork coat made years ago when I was a student, and dyed using onions and beetroot. I'm going to make a sofa blanket out of it.