Thank you for your nice words yesterday. To those who asked: Rebecca is ok, but has some on-going health issues that condition my days, and our family life.
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We are the grateful recipients of many hand-me-downs. Or at least, the boys are, because for some peculiar coincidence our little word of friends and acquaintances is populated mainly by boys. And so in the years we have received lots of dinosaur tee-shirts, monster sweaters, cargo pants with so many side pockets to store and forget bits and pieces of paper or cards or rocks in - all for the joy of the washing machine - and also lots of beautiful woolly sweaters.
But when the boys jump a new size (or sometimes two), what do I do with them? Some of these garments have had many owners, and my boys wear them right out. Some are still in good condition, and I keep them for Rebecca. Some I know she'll never wear, years down the line, and because we don't know people to hand them down to, I take them to the clothes recycling bin, where they get collected to be distributed to charities.
I'm always a little sorry to part with woollies, even store-bought ones. I have on occasion felted some, thinking I might be able to use the wool felt for some craft project. But when you felt a child's sweater, and once you've discarded all the useless parts, you don't get much felt to play with. And I've always felt a little guilty: is it better to end the life of a woolly sweater for so little felt, or to give it away and have it keep some other child warm?
Recently I tried something new. I had a beautiful store-bought burgundy sweater (and I have photos of it somewhere hidden in my computer, but can't find them, which is literally driving me insane) that in the years of use had grown way too wide, and I unwound it back to a skein, hoping to repurpose the yarn. The yarn, naturally, now needs to be unwound again onto a swift, and washed to smooth it out. Once it's dry, I'll have to put it back on the swift and make it into skeins. Then it will be ready to become a sweater again - this time for Rebecca, judging from how little yarn I was able to unwind as a continuous thread.
By the time Rebecca is ready to wear a size 3T sweater made from the yarn of a size L sweater, I'll have spent a considerable amount of time going through these steps, and I'm just not sure it's worth it.
