ReKnit It Before You Quit It

I've mentioned in the past that I have had to pull apart my own personal knitted items in order to get yarn to make items for the store, although this is not how I prefer to go about getting my yarn to make things - it is an option. A slightly lesser known option to those outside of the knit and crochet communities is recycling yarn. There are numerous ways that you can end up with recycled yarn but the one I intend to focus on it unraveling sweaters and I don't just mean a hand-knit sweater you happen to have laying around, I mean the store bought sort.

There are a lot of crafters out there who will buy knitted items from places like Goodwill just to use the yarn. What to do if you don't craft? Enter ReKn.it.com where "this month my mom will turn your old sweater into a new scarf."

The ReKn.it site is run by Haik Avanian offspring to the (quickly becoming) infamous mom.

How it works:
1.) you send an old sweater to my mom
2.) she unravels & reknits it into
something new.
3.) a brand new, hand-made, one of a kind item is sent back to you.

Still want an item but don't want a scarf? People can vote each month to help decide what "mom" will knit next.

The ReKn.it site has very little information about the project. A little (but not much) more info can be found on it's Face Book fan page. I opted to look at both and then contact Haik directly:

I'd love to see this mystery mom. How bout' a face to some knits?
She kinda' enjoys the anonymity – I personally find it funny as well :)

Whose idea was this? Yours or your mothers?
The base idea was my moms, and I sort of built on top of that (the way it's presented, the monthly timing, the voting, etc).

What does she do if she either comes up short the amount of yarn she needs to finish or has left over yarn?
If there's not going to be enough, she can usually tell before she begins, so she'll either find similar yarn to use it with, or use some of our own for the entire thing. With cases where yarn is left over, we contact the customer and give them the option to either receive the left-overs, or leave them with us for future use.

Will this only be going on for a year?
We'll see how it goes for the year, if people consistently use the service, we really have no reason to stop it after one year. I'm sure it'll evolve and grow as we learn more from our customers over time.

Is there anything else in particular you want anyone to know about this project?
I would like to note that one of our bigger hopes for this is that the act of reknitting becomes a more common practice. I hope that people can realize the how fun and valuable this can be :)