All natural baby!

I recently bought a hand knit sweater from our local St. Vincent De Paul's (for those of you who don't have them....it's like a Salvation Army). I had walked down to it one day because we had good weather and I had two bucks. When I had counted my money I had thought I had more but lo and behold it was 2 bucks. I was short and the nice guy at the register was nice and gave me fifty cents to put towards my purchase. So I take that all back. I think I had 1.78. My purchase came to 2.04. So let's back track.....

I walked to my local St. Vinneys because the weather was nice and I had some pocket change. Upon walking in the door there are racks of clothes and because the weather was warming up (we get spring early where I live) the heavier clothing was on sale. I spotted this sweater from the doorway. It was hideous! Very gaudy and gargantuan! It was perfect. It was mine. I went and checked it out and wasn't sure if I really wanted it. My mind flashed to a set of pictures I had looked through where a lady was unraveling a sweater for the yarn. I KNEW I could do it but did I WANT to..... I put the sweater back on the rack and procedded to check out their yarn. Pretty sad lot that was. I made my way back to the sweater. I decided I had to buy it. I asked a clerk how much it was and she proceeded to tell me it was 2.something9 and after the 30% discount it would be 2.04. I pulled out my money and counted. Not once or twice but three times. I am sooo paranoid about not having enough money. How I managed to count wrong three times amazes me. I get up to the counter and find out I am behind. I am mortified and try brushing it off. The guy at the counter takes pity on me and hands me fifty cents (I left the change on the counter.....someone else could use it). I then head to the library so my daughter can play while I get to work.

Lordy! Was that an undertaking. I took me about a week to unravel this thing and that was going fast. I was upset at first. I was getting a lot of waste yarn. I had to rethink this. I found a good spot and was unable to get the entire sweater pulled apart and wrapped around my chair.

Since this was a homemade garment I had no idea what type of fiber it was. There was no tag and after being embarassed at the register I wasn't about to ask if they knew. I posted on the Yarn forum of Arts and Crafts over on Mothering to find out to figure out what it was. I was told to light a match to it. Yes, put a flmae to my newly unraveled yarn! I took a piece of waste yarn and did just that. Only to my dismay did I realize I had no idea what "burnt" and what "melted" looked like in regards to yarn. I mean everything has a degree of melting. I put that idea out of mind.

I wanted to dye this (did I mention that it is natural color?). I looked up how to do it and found some instructions for Kool-Aid dying. I figured it wasn't brand specific since most things like that aren't. Don't assume anything!!!!

I ran to my kitchen and pulled out this nasty drink mix, Up!, that I had bought awhile back. The flavor was what made me buy it. It's disgusting! It was red though and that's what I wanted. I used it in place of Kool-Aid and tempted the fates. Good thing I had so much waste yarn. It was a flop. My yarn turned a sickly brown and it did not work. Later when I was telling my sister about it she said that it was brand specific. You couldn't even use Flavor-Aid. It had to be Kool-Aid. I mused that it had to be that and not the fact that my yarn could easily be acrylic.

Tonight I went over to Fred Meyers for some pain killer and some yarn. I wanted to get something to go with my longies in case I didn't have enough (see previous post). So I got everything I wanted and grabbed two packs of Kool-Aid (one orange and one black cherry).

Guess what? IT WORKED!!!!!!!! You know what that means? It means I have a natural fiber of some sort. I say some sort cause it could be cotton or it could be wool. I have no clue! I now have hanging on a hanger in my kitchen from my canned goods cupboard some gloriously colored yarn. It happens to smell like black cherry too which is a bonus.

It's not as dark as I wanted but I also dyed quite a bit of yarn. It's fixable though. I'll just redo it tomorrow with another pack. I'm getting ready to do orange next.

So what have we learned form this post? Frugalness rocks!!! For 2.04 I have more than one ball/skein/hank of yarn and for 1.00 I can get 4 different colors. So for 3.04 I have 4 things of individualized yarn. 3.04!!!!! I am so excited right now. I can now create a yarn stash completely for me that I will be in love with and can have exactly like I want. No one else will have the same stash as me!!!

Ahhhhhh...the power of being frugal.