Unraveled Sweaters

Here are the two sweaters that I got at the thrift store the other day. I had already taken off the collar when I took this picture (I got ahead of myself). 

After I picked up the sweaters I did some more research on taking apart sweaters and decided I should have done more research before buying, not because I picked bad sweaters, but I could have without realizing it. 

Example: Make sure the sweater isn't felted anywhere, don't buy sweaters that have been serged on the sides, etc. 

I found some good suggestion online on what to pick out and how to take the sweaters apart.

The pile of yarn is unraveled from the collar, one sleeve and one of the front pieces, I still need to unravel the rest.  I've cleaned the yarn that I unraveled by soaking it in hot water with a little bit of hand soap. I then rinsed it in cold water. It took a whole day to dry in front of the fan, because yarn soaks up a lot of water, that was okay though, because I was at work while it was drying.

 

Above is the yarn all clean and dry. When I was unraveling the sweater I noticed that it was actually knitted with two thinner yarns instead of one thicker yarn. I wanted the two yarns separated, so as I pulled the yarns apart I wound the two yarns on two kitchen chairs side by side. I still ended up with a knotty mess, so I might roll it in a ball first before separating the yarns. I did end up getting it untangle and the pile I was working on in skeins.

 So of the yarn that I've unraveled from the sweater this is what I have left to put into skeins. Of course I still have a lot of sweater to unravel. I'm going to get a lot of yarn from a $4 sweater.

Rest of sweater, clean yarn and some of it in skeins.

One of the skeins