Ashley Martineau:
Thrift-Store Stash Queen

My name is Ashley Martineau and I enjoy shocking thrift store cashiers by casually buying the most hideous sweaters they’ve ever seen. I learned how to knit from a widow in Oregon when I was thirteen. As a community service I visited her weekly; she passed down her wisdom as well as her knitting experience. She has also taught my adopted sister how to knit. My mother in law re-taught me in January, and now I can’t stop. I am recently married, and my new hobby was getting a bit expensive, so I decided to find a cheap way to keep my yarn stash full. One day at the thrift store I found the ugliest wool sweater. I thought, “This dog of a sweater would be beautiful as a hat or scarf!” As a beginner at knitting, I considered myself a pro at unraveling knitted items; so the sweater came home with me. After reading how to knit a sweater, I followed the directions backwards and turned the sweater into a pile of Ramen-looking yarn. Through trial and error, I learned what sweaters were easiest to unravel. One day I brought several sweaters to my in-laws house to unravel while my husband did some yard work. My in-laws found unraveling so relaxing that they began buying sweaters and unraveling them for me. Before I knew it, my yarn stash was filled to overflowing. I didn’t need 30 sweaters worth of yarn in my house, so I sold the surplus on eBay. It became so successful that I turned unraveling into a little eBay business. My inbox was soon filled with emails asking, “How do you unravel a sweater?” So I spent an afternoon photographing and writing a detailed online tutorial. As of today over 7000 people have viewed the tutorial. I also started an online community for people to ask questions and share their unraveling projects. Unraveling sweaters is a great way to keep your yarn stash full, and the yarn you don't use can be sold on eBay to make money for other craft projects. I like to think I'm saving the world one ugly sweater at a time by ripping it apart and giving it a chance to be something beautiful.

Ashley's Garter Stitch Shawl

This is a very flexible pattern—you can make it with just one kind of yarn, lots of different yarns; you can make a shorter shawl or longer shawl just by changing the number of rows you knit.

Pattern
CO 2 sts.
Row 1: K1f&b, k1--3 sts.
Row 2: K1, k1f&b, k1--4 sts.
Row 3: K1, k1f&b, knit to end--1 st inc'd.

Repeat Row 3 for pattern.

Switch to a different yarn every 3 or 5 rows, depending on how wide you want the stripe to be and how much yarn you have. Leave the ends of the different yarns out to make the fringe. Switching yarns on odd-numbered rows will make a fringe on both sides of the shawl.

Continue knitting until you have about 230 sts, or until the shawl is the desired length. BO loosely.

Finishing
Tie on leftover yarn pieces to balance out and thicken the fringe, if desired. Lightly block if desired--finished shawl will be triangular in shape.


Helpful Tip
Use smaller scraps of yarn near the base of the shawl so you don't run out of yarn mid-row on a longer row.

For a smaller shawl (to fit a child): BO when the piece is about 100 sts wide.