Free yarn. What knitter would turn down free yarn? Not this one! So when one of my SILs said she’d gotten some yarn from a client and it was mine if I wanted it, I said sure! To be honest, I was expecting chain-store acrylic. Then she said the woman had told her it was “good yarn, not the cheap stuff” and my hopes went up a bit. A quick glance in the bag revealed it was indeed “better” yarn — I saw one label for Rowan wool and thought I might find some goodies.

That night I dumped out the bag, and as I started picking up the balls, I made a disappointing discovery: the yarn had been stored around a smoker. The smell wasn’t super strong, not overpowering, but it was there. I knew I could wash finished pieces but I was afraid the smell would bother me as I knit.

I did some googling and asking around, and the consensus was that washing the yarn was my only hope, and even that might not work. Knowing that, I performed triage on the yarn. I set aside to donate the colors I didn’t like, the unlabeled skeins I thought were acrylic, the ones that felt too scratchy for me. That left me with seven balls of wool and cotton. I filled up a tub with water and Eucalan and let them soak for several hours, then squished them out and set them on a towel to dry.

Well, that took forever, as you can imagine. I decided they’d dry out faster and air out better if I could put them in loose hanks. So I spent some time with my swift and ended up with neat, tidy, damp hanks hanging in my craft room.

Tonight they were dry so back on the swift they went to get wound into pretty cakes. As near as I can tell, the smoke smell is gone. (As is most of the cat hair.) What treasures did I keep? I hear you asking. Well, I got two skeins of what I believe is pima cotton (pink and purple), one skein of Rowan superwash wool in red, one skein of a luscious wool/silk/cashmere blend (Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra, to be specific), two balls of Mochi Plus in the color Neptune (which I recognized because I have three balls already), and best of all, a skein of Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky in red. They’re all definitely worth the work of washing and reskeining! And now I’m quite pleased with myself and my new stash.

What about you? Have you ever gotten awesome yarn for free? Or gone to great lengths to save good yarn?