Holiday knitting wrap-up

A quick post with pictures of Christmas projects. They include, from top to bottom: a diagonal scarf, multiple hats, a felted belt, and a Noro laptop case pictured both pre- and post-felting. Other holiday projects not pictured include a twisted rib hat and legwarmers. Most pictures here taken by my younger brother.

$6.99 Goodwill sweater

Many knitters start out thinking "I'll be able to save *so* much money by knitting my own things". After a while you think back and laugh at your naivete. Wool yarn is expensive, starting at $6/ball and going up from there.

Then I heard about the idea of recycling yarn. Shop at a thrift store, buy a sweater cheap, unravel it, and voila: much inexpensive yarn. Besides saving money I like the idea of recycling and conserving resources.

So this weekend, I bought the sweater here for $6.99 at Goodwill. The tag says "Hand knitted in Greece for Byzantium, 100% wool". It's beautiful wool, and will produce many balls of yarn. Of course on one hand it's hard to justify unraveling because a) it fits me perfectly b) i can not yet knit something this nice.

But since this is an experiment, the unraveling has begun. It's timeconsuming to get the seams apart, but then zips along. More updates to come.

Yarn Harlot scarf

The yarn harlot is a well-known knitting author and has an interesting blog: http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/. Sometimes she publishes patterns, including the pattern for this scarf. Easy, fun, excellent pattern. It's the first time I knit with Alpaca yarn, and while it's soft, it's a little on the itchy side when worn. Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca Sport.