In the Bag Upcycling Project

 When our friend came for Thanksgiving, he said he'd brought something hoping I'd look at it. It was a jumper (pullover sweater) that his late wife had knitted using some fluffy yarn with slubs. He wondered whether I'd be able to take it apart and unravel it to use the yarn for something else. I said I could and he happily left it with me.

I started by removing the seams holding all the parts together. There was a front, back, and 2 sleeves--pretty basic, which was good. The neckline was knit longer, then folded over and sewed down so I took that seam out, too.

I started with the back then moved on to the front. Ripping the knitting back was a bit fiddly at first because the bind-off edges were tighter than the knitting itself, as you'd expect. But it went quite smoothly once I got below the armhole shaping because it was straight knitting from there with no more bind-offs. The yarn was much easier to pull out than I thought it might be and this gave me a clue as to the possible fibre content, but more on that below.

I'd set the sleeves aside, because I wanted to preserve some of our friend's wife's work. 

As I ripped back the knitting, I thought about how I wanted to use one or both of them. I decided to make a bag.

I sewed the top of the sleeve closed and it became the bottom of the bag. You can see in the bottom right corner of the picture where it's not quite even--that's where some shaping was done. I considered evening it out, but decided to leave it as she knitted it. I used the yarn from the accent stripes to crochet a strap and a slip stitch border around the edge of the bag. 

I am quite happy with this project (and so is our friend). I am not sure if I will keep the second sleeve or rip it back. I have the rest of the sweater done and now have a bag full of fuzzy yarn balls. I plan to use my pin loom to weave squares with it. It held up well to the unraveling even when I tugged fairly hard, so I think it should be strong enough for that.

As for fibre content, I did the burn test on the yarn. It did burn (wool is flame resistant) and there was a bit of a hard black knob on the end, which indicates synthetic, but it wasn't as large as I'd expect if it was all synthetic. There was a significant amount of ash as well which indicates natural fibres. Based on all of that, I would say it's a blend with mostly natural fibres (some kind of animal hair). The burn test doesn't tell me specifically what the fibres are. But as an educated guess and based on the burn test I would say that both the fuzzy and smooth yarns are a blend of primarily natural fibres with some synthetic blended in. I would guess that the fuzzy yarn has a nylon core strand plied with the fuzzy strand, which feels and looks like mohair. Also, both nylon and mohair are very strong and the yarn held up quite well to the pulling. The fuzzy bits stick to each other and the slubs catch, so at times I had to tug fairly hard and the yarn did not break, which is part of why I would guess that it's a blend of nylon and mohair. The smooth yarn is also a blend based on the burn test and I would guess that is mostly wool with some acrylic.

This is a very satisfying project for me in many different ways. When I use the bag and weave with the yarn, I will think of our friend's wife. Sadly, I never met her, but from what our friend and another friend who knew her say, we have a lot in common. I suspect that we would have been friends. I wish I'd known her.

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