Ribbit, ribbit!

I’ve recently been doing a lot of knitting – I have a mountain of stash yarn, and I really do need to get rid of it, the only thing is I don’t have enough of any one yarn to make something worthwhile. I seem to have a small amount of a lot of different types, colours, weights but I want to make epically intricate jumpers not teensy potholders!

The thing is nice wool is so expensive and the cheap acrylic is shiny, scratchy and well, cheap. No, there’s no malabrigo or noro for me. So, I did a trawl of charity shops – Thirsk, Northallerton, Acomb, I must have visited about 30 looking for jumpers knitted in nice wool. I thought I would easily find loads of them, but they all seem to be knitted in such a fine yarn they’d be useless to me and the devil to frog.

I did find a few though:

Isn’t this jumper vile? It is however 100% merino and when I frogged it I got this:

And these:

It cost £4.50, but just think how much I would have paid for new merino, never mind the mother of pearl buttons! It’s 3ply (I think, haven’t checked it yet) but it’ll be great for knitting one of these patterns which all seem to be 3 or 4ply:

I also got a few more, they’re just waiting to be washed and stretched to get the kinks out.

This was a huge, chunky handknit cardi that cost something like £3.50. I don’t know what it’s made of, there’s definitely some acrylic in there but I burnt a scrap and could definitely smell burning wool. Either way, it doesn’t look like acrylic and it’s very, very soft.

The buttons are plastic, but they might come in useful for something.

This one is 100% cotton, dk or worsted I think – don’t you just love the colour?

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them after gauge swatches, but the great thing is I know I have enough for a jumper. I’ve got two more to frog, one pure wool cream jumper that looks dk and I’ll probably dye, and another handknit cardi that is probably acrylic but it was only 70p so I couldn’t pass it up. Oh, and an angora/lambswool mix cardi in a similar colour to the cotton above. So three more to frog :)

I’ve become a Ravelry hound, if you haven’t visited do so now! It’s fantastic, it really is. Everyone is so helpful and it’s great to see all the variations of each pattern willingly shared.

If you want to have a go at frogging your own thrifted jumpers (or even some you have stashed in the back of your wardrobe) there is a great tutorial here.

Beccy