About Yarn Harvest

Yarn Harvest was founded as a creative response to many of the questions being asked today. How to keep producing products locally? How to lessen our impact on the environment? And how to not sacrifice quality or value in doing so.

By choosing to recycle sweaters into yarn, we are able to find good answers to these questions. By finding a new use for a second-hand, locally-abundant resource, we are able to keep our costs low and our manufacturing local. By not having to make new wool, we are able to reduce the carbon footprint and negative impacts on the environment that making new wool causes. And by getting involved in the wonderful world of knitting, crocheting, and crafting in general, we know that what we make is both quality and a good value.

We here at Yarn Harvest are thrilled to offer our 100% recycled wool yarn and we look forward to hearing from y’all.

Our Process

We have quite the process to produce our recycled wool yarn. Our first step is to locate an array of used and second-hand sweaters. We search all over Central Texas to find our sweaters, taking them in from yard sales, thrift stores, and even donation-store surpluses. After we’ve obtained the sweaters, we sort each sweater according to quality, color, and weight.

Then our deconstruction process can begin. Each sweater’s seams are unstitched by hand, before being unwound into as many yards of yarn as we can salvage. Once unwound, we wash and clean the yarn. Keeping in mind our impact on the environment, we use all-natural, earth-friendly laundry detergents and fabric softeners. We use and recommend Ecos Powdered Laundry Detergent and Safe ‘N Soft fabric softener.

Finally, we allow the yarn to air dry.  The weight of the yarn and the water evens out the kinks, leaving straight yarn ready to be packaged into 126 yard hanks.