Every once in awhile I get the chance to visit Goodwill, and if I have the time I always visit the sweater section to look for a men's extra-large sweater made out of a good wool. You can get a lot of yarn out of a men's extra-large sweater.
This is just one of six balls of 100% Peruvian Wool that I recycled from a wool sweater a long time ago, and with the coming advent of Baby Ella I finally found the perfect use for it. Wooly diaper soakers! (More on that in a later post).
Handyman kindly made me a cheap niddy noddy out of PVC (there are tons of tutorials on making your own, just google them).
Basically a niddy-noddy is a fast way to wind yarn into large loops called skeins. I had to take the yarn from balls and wind it into a skein because I wanted to dye the yarn, and if you dye yarn while in the ball form you will end up with a pile of multi-colored spaghetti.
Pretty, but useless for knitting.
Handyman put these nifty end caps on the PVC which kept the yarn from slipping off. I hadn't seen that in any of the tutorials online, but it was very useful.
Once the yarn was wound, I tied it several places to keep it from getting tangled. Then I slipped it off the niddy-noddy.
After that I gave it a good soak in the sink, and then began splotching it with some red and green Kool-aid that I happened to have in the cupboard from the last time I dyed yarn.
Red Kool-aid has to be extremely concentrated for it to come out a true red, and in my case (which is what I had hoped) it turned out to be more of a pinkish hue.
I let it hang to dry and then wound it into a yarn cake to make it easier to work with. All done and ready for use!
(Huh. The only time I use Kool-aid is when I dye yarn. Does this make me a good mother or a bad mother?)
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