It’s okay if that project didn’t work out

Have you ever knit a whole sweater and then never worn it once? Maybe the gauge was off or you just hate the style now even though it seemed cute at the time. One amazing thing about knitting is how we can actually reuse our materials! If you sew a jumpsuit and find you’re not a jumpsuit person, maybe you can scrap the fabric and use it for a quilt? But there’s no un-cutting that fabric. It’s never going to become yardage again.

But with knitting, our yarn can become new again and here’s your reminder to go ahead and recycle that un-loved project! It takes a little time to un-pick your ends to get the unraveling going, but once you do, it’s so satisfying to rip that whole thing out!

When you’re done frogging, you’ll have a bunch of balls of yarn, but don’t cast on for that fresh, new project yet! You might notice that your yarn is very kinky. Since you blocked your sweater, those wool fibres relaxed into their new shape. Now that you’ve pulled them out of that shape, they’re likely to remember what it was like to be a stitch. It’s totally possible to knit with the yarn like that, but it’s likely that the resulting fabric will end up a bit sloppy. To give your new project the best chance possible, take the time to steam out those balls of yarn before starting your next knit.

A pile of freshly frogged yarn cakes, mostly in beige with one red one. The yarn is clearly quite kinky.

Here’s how

If you like videos, see below for a quick video showing this process.

I use a swift and ball winder, but you could also wind your yarn around a chair back and then wind it back into balls by hand.

Step 1:

Attach one end of your yarn to your swift and then wind the whole ball onto your swift by turning the swift manually. I usually drop my ball of yarn on the floor and keep it from rolling too far with my feet. It helps if you wind your yarn into cakes while you’re frogging rather than into round balls.

Step 2:

Steam out all the kinks. Be careful to steam the inside of the hank as well and then wait a few minutes for it to dry.

If you don’t have a steamer, you can also wash your yarn if you tie it off first. Do that by wrapping the end around the hank, then stick it through about half the yarn and around the whole thing again. Tie it to itself. Do the same with the other end and once or twice more with scrap yarn so it won’t get tangled in the wash. (This is how your yarn comes when you buy it if it’s not already wound into a cake or ball.) Then just hand wash the yarn and hang it to dry. Be sure it’s really dry before you wind it again.

Step 3:

Wind your yarn with a ball winder or by hand.

Step 4:

Cast on!

Closeup of Andrea’s hands holding a stack of two yarn cakes, bright red on top and beige on bottom.

The yarn shown in this post is the absolutely dreamy Farmer’s Daughter Pishkun. It’s a DK weight Non-Superwash MT & WY Rambouillet that’s super soft and sturdy enough for garments. Just to prove how soft this is, my mom mostly likes cashmere and usually doesn’t think any wool, including Merino, is quite soft enough but she loves the scarf I made for her out of this yarn! Here’s my Swatch Project post about it.

Using Frogged Yarn