I have a renewed admiration for people who make new things from old things.  New materials are easy: you buy them, you manipulate them, and you make something. Done. Making something new from something old is more like: you hunt down, scavenge, discover, clean, repair, prepare, sort through, organize, store, dig through, manipulate, and then you make something.

A friend of mine has been hunting down materials for me to play with.  She has been finding old wool and cashmere sweaters and sending them my way.  When I get them I sort through them, and then do what you are never supposed to do with wool sweaters if you ever want to wear them again, wash them in hot water and soap a couple of times and then dry them on high.  When they are done they are usually much smaller, felted, and covered in lint.  The first time I did this I tried to pick the lint haze off by hand.  That was fine for the bigger pieces, but not so efficient for the whole thing.  Another friend offered to let me borrow her sweater defuzzer (I am sure it has a more technical name, but defuzzer works for me).  The defuzzer works miracles.  Now all I have to do is reduce the pile.

This is the pile of sweaters yet to be done.

A sweater in its sorry lint covered state.

Lots of elbow grease and a half an hour later