What is Frogging?

The term “frogging” yarn may sound funny to you, but it’s a way to recycle old clothes and use the yarn for something new. As concerns about global warming become greater, people everywhere are thinking of better ways to recycle, reuse and renew. Frogging presents the perfect way to recycle used sweaters, yielding enough yarn to make a new sweater. Yarn can be used for a variety of small projects and some knitters will take the yarn from several sweaters to make one larger project. Any project that can be made with new store-bought yarn can be made much more cheaply with recycled yarn.

How do You Do it?

Frogging started out as a play on words for knitters and crocheters when they discovered a mistake in their work. To fix a mistake, you must undo all the work that came after the error. You take the needles or crochet hook out of the piece you are working on and pull on the tail of the yarn, unraveling stitches, until you get back to the spot where the mistake was made. When pulling, loops of yarn come undone quickly, making a gentle “rip-it” sound. Some like to call this action ripping and others call it frogging. While any knit or crochet item can be frogged, sweaters are the most common items used. Woven fabrics cannot easily be taken apart for their yarn, so they are not chosen for this type of recycling.

What Kinds of Sweaters do You Need?

Just as weaves are not appropriate for frogging, not every sweater is good for frogging. Cheaper sweaters have surged seams. A surging machine cuts the fabric as it sews, leaving hundreds of two or three-foot sections of yarn. This makes it impossible to come out with one continuous skein. Surged sweaters can be useful to spinners, but are not attractive to knitters or crocheters. These crafters look for sweaters with seams that are crocheted with a continuous slipstitch. Like any crochet work, pulling on the tail of yarn unravels the stitches, making it easy to take sweaters apart at the arm seams, shoulder seams, collar and sides. Each piece is then ripped and wound into a new ball of yarn. The yield comes to roughly four 4-ounce skeins of yarn, depending on the size of the sweater.

When yarn is unraveled, some froggers call it ramen or poodle yarn, due to the wavy creases left in the yarn. Yarn can be treated with a gentle bath to take the curls out, or it can be knit with the wave intact to provide a textural depth in the knitting. Unraveled yarn can also lose some of its twist. This is especially true of cotton. Froggers can use many methods to re-twist the yarn including using a ball winder, drop spindle or spinning wheel. Other accessories helpful to froggers include swifts and niddy noddies, tools that help them keep the yarn neat while they process it. Once the yarn has been straightened and re-twisted, it is hard to distinguish from new store-bought yarn.

Here’s What it Looks Like:

Recycled Yarn on the Mainstream Retail Market

There are also recycled yarns hitting the retail market that are less eco-friendly that frogged yarn. These fibers are made from mill ends and other cheap sources of cotton remnants that are mulched by machinery, mixed with acrylic and re-spun into a 75% recycled product. Considerable energy resources are used in the process. Creating recycled yarn through frogging is more energy efficient because it can be done by human energy alone, with only human-powered tools.

Luxury Fiber Yarns Cheap

The practice of reusing sweaters for the yarn is gaining considerable popularity among crafters. This is partly due to stronger environmental concerns among the public, but it is also because of the slow economy. Knitters, crocheters and felters have figured out that they can get expensive, high-quality yarn very cheaply by frogging. They can find sweaters made of angora, cashmere, mohair, wool, alpaca and 100% cotton for just a few dollars. When yarn is bought for just a few dollars in the form of a gently used sweater, it can yield hundreds of dollars worth of luxury yarn. This gives crafters the opportunity to make higher quality items for much less money. The thrill of finding a cashmere sweater for $3 can keep froggers coming back to thrift stores every week, like casino gamblers hoping to strike a jackpot.

Who Else Uses Frogged Yarn?

Knitters and crocheters are not the only crafters taking advantage of used sweaters. Fiber artists are recycling wool sweaters by felting them to make into bags, hats and other durable items. Yarn makers enjoy frogging too. The process produces many remnant sections of yarn, or clippings, which can be used for small projects or spun on a wheel into an interestingly variegated yarn. The yarn from two sweaters can be spun together to make one entirely new yarn. Weavers are getting in on the act too. Surprisingly, frogging has even helped those with certain mental disorders, like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Sufferers enjoy sitting with a section of sweater and ripping away stressful, obsessive thoughts.

In areas with cold winters, opportunities for finding sweaters to frog abound. Salvation Army stores, thrift shops and summer yard sales all yield fabulous fibers to unravel and reuse. Those who live in warmer clients often have more difficulty finding quality sweaters to recycle. As a result, small markets like Rewind Yarn have sprouted online, selling used sweaters for frogging or felting at very low prices. This gives everyone a chance to enjoy a hobby that is fun, creative and good for the environment.

New Finds.