There are so many great places to buy second hand yarn from. You may need to be flexible with the type and colour of yarn you are thrifting, but if you are, there are absolute pre-owned bargains to be had!
If you are searching for the re-sale of a very specific yarn and colour, you may have to play the long game and wait for it to come up for sale – and be prepared that it may never happen.
Just bear in mind that it is only a bargain and worth buying if you know you are going to use the yarn!
Thanks for all the extra tips that came from the lovely community over at my Brew From The Bothy Crochet & Knitting Podcast. 🙂
I have pulled many of the tips from this blog post into a vlog.
General Tips for Buying Pre-owned Yarn
Here are some general thoughts on how to approach second hand yarn buying:
- Only buy it if you really like the yarn and the price point is right. Buying something because it is cheap isn’t as good as buying the right thing for the job.
- Before you buy, think about what you are going to use the yarn for. Are the quantities right to finish the whole project? It is highly unlikely that you will be able to thrift more of that yarn in the same batch.
- Do you know what the blend is and how that works up? Are you going to like the finished fabric?
- If it is unlabelled it could be anything and you need to be okay with that, especially if you are buying from an online source. I now don’t buy anything that is unlabelled – I want to know what I am working with.
- If you bought unlabelled yarn, you can try to burn test to try to identify it. Gist Yarn have an excellent blog post on this here.
- Yarn cones will often refer to NM (number of 1000m per 1kg of yarn) rather than DK/ sport or 4ply etc. I found this rough guide on the Yarn on Cone website: 1–1.3 is chunky, 1.3–1.8 is aran, 1.8–2.4 is DK, 2.5–4.5 is sport > 4ply, 5–8 is 3ply, 9-12 is heavy lace, 13 – 16 is lace, 16+ is cobweb lace.
- The label on the inside of the cone isn’t necessarily what’s on the cone though! Yarn cones (plastic and cardboard get reused and you can’t rely on old labels having been removed and new ones applied.
- Don’t be swayed by single skeins of hand dyed yarn unless you like to crochet or knit accessories or do colourwork.
- Look for signs of clothes moth activity. You absolutely do not want to introduce these into your stash. I have written a whole blog post on ‘How to Prevent & Detect Clothes Moths in Your Stash’ as a helpful guide.
- If the label is in a foreign language, use Google translate and your phone to hover over it and translate it to your preferred language. I have previously bought amazing mohair that was made in England but had a Russian label on it!
Where to Buy Second Hand Yarn
There are two main ways to buy second hand yarn:
Where to Buy Second Hand Yarn Online
Buying second hand is having a real renaissance. Many people are looking for quality over quantity and taking to reseller spaces such as Vinted as a place to buy what they are looking for.
There are a number of places that I scan to look for second hand yarn. For all of them, try lots of different search terms. You would be surprised what bargains might be gained from searching for “500g cream wool” versus “500g undyed Bluefaced Leicester”. Sometimes the real bargains are from people that don’t understand what they are selling or just want to get rid of things quickly.
With all listings with a label, you should be able to read it from the photos. This a great way of discerning what the yarn weight and blend is. Just because a skein of wool is called ‘Shetland’ doesn’t mean it is 100% Shetland wool or even has any Shetland breed wool in it!
Look at the labels closely and if they are fuzzy or don’t show the required information, ask the seller for more details. They may now know what they are selling, but you need to know what you are buying!
Vinted & Depop
Vinted and Depop are great places to start. I really love Vinted and shop on there a lot. I don’t have the same experience with Depop, but have seen pre-owned yarn on sale there.
Many people know these as reseller platforms for clothes and shoes, but you can actually buy all sorts of things.
Tip 1 - My best tip is to search words like “skein”, “yarn skein”, “hand dyed yarn”, “wool skein” or favourite dyers or yarn brands. As I type this, I just searched for “Rowan yarn” in Vinted and it came back with 383 search results. “hand dyed yarn” has just returned over 500 results. You can also try country of origin as a search such as "Danish yarn".
Tip 2 - Another great tip is to find a listing that you like and scroll down to the bottom to see what else that person is selling. Most sellers offer bundle options from 5-20% off depending on how many other items you buy from them.
Sellers are savvy and most know to list lots of one item category at the same time to maximise bundle sales.
The above image shows you a Vinted listing I am stalking as I write this blog post. Yes, the £70 for five skeins seems like a high price tag, but here is some context:
- The highest cost for this listing is £77 including fees and P&P. If I did a bundle deal I would have to buy more items, but could get up to 30% off the £70.
- This yarn (in a different colour) is available on the hand dyers website and is £27 per skein, so £135 for five skeins. The P&P costs are £20 (fully insured), so the total cost is £155.
So, the Vinted listing is actually half the cost of the yarn brand new and therefore a total bargain! I do not need this yarn, but I really want this yarn.
ebay
Ebay is full of yarn – some of it second hand and some of it from small yarn shops that use eBay as an online presence.
The beauty of eBay is that it has a great search engine, so if you are looking for a very specific yarn, you will know instantly whether it is available on eBay or not.
Using the same searches I did for Vinted, “Rowan yarn” gave me over 1000 search results. Many were from shops, but I saw a few lower priced bargains in there too. “Hand dyed” yarns brought back 217 results.
The above image shows an auction listing on eBay for 150g of yarn. If this sold for the current price, with P&P it would be just £14.16, which is just £9.44 per 100g.
As with Vinted, you can look at a seller’s other items to see whether they have more yarn that you would want to buy. This can lead to decreased postage costs. The above seller is clearly having a Wollemeise destash, so if you like their yarn, you could go to town wit this seller and probably swoop up some real bargains.
Tip 1 – You can filter for location/ material/ colour/ weight – all sorts of things on eBay. This will help to refine your search and only see things that you are interested in.
Tip 2 – Often, the real bargains are on items that are for sale as an auction item. If you put a low bid in and there is no other interest, your bid wins and you get a bargain. This can be quite an addictive way of buying things, so be warned.
Facebook Marketplace
There is a surprising amount of yarn available on FB marketplace. There are a few benefits to buying on this platform:
- Sellers are usually open to offers, especially if the item has been listed for a week or so and not sold.
- If the item is local, you arrange to collect it. This allows you to check the yarn over for signs of moth activity before you buy it and bring it home.
- Some, but not all sellers are willing to post items if you cover the P&P.
My only caveat would be that sometimes the sellers in FB Marketplace are awful at communicating and just ignore messages. I also think that the better quality yarns are available in FB groups and reseller sites.
Facebook Yarn Groups
There is a FB group for everything and yarn buying is no exception! I am a member of ‘Yarn Snobs – hand-dyed yarns FSOT’. This group is UK-based and purely for good quality hand dyed yarns. Some folks sell from outside the UK and some UK sellers sell beyond the UK, you just need to ask.
Tip - Try searching under the Groups tab for things like “yarn destash” or “hand dyed yarn”. I believe that FB filters to what is local to you, so you should get returns that are location appropriate for wherever you are in the world.
Payments are generally made via PayPal and the buyer pays for P&P which should be stated as an up-front cost by the seller. .
Experience tells me that prices are usually a little higher than other reseller sites, but the sellers are yarn enthusiasts and know its worth. Also, they are more likely to have stored the yarn properly and not be sending you anything with extra beasties in it.
Where to Buy Second Hand Yarn From Bricks & Mortar Shops
Charity Shops
This has to go to the top of my list because I adore charity shopping. I am Scottish and a bargain hunter to my absolute core!
Most charity shops have a basket or two where general crafting items tend to be housed. If you get to know your local charity shops, you will soon learn where these. Some charities filter all of their crafting goods to one larger location and you can ask the good people in the charity shop what happens to their craft donations.
I don’t often strike gold at the charity shop for yarn, but often find interesting pattern books there instead.
As is the deal when you are looking for anything in charity shops it is the frequency that you visit that will yield gold. If you visit once in a blue moon, you are unlikely to find anything you want to buy. If you visit regularly and with a keen eye, you will find treasure.
Caveat – much of the yarn I see in charity shops is unlabelled, so there are no details on fibre blend or yarn weight. Remember that you can do the burn test to try to work out what the fibre is, but you have to make the purchase to find out.
I didn’t keep this black mohair in my stash because after the burn test I think it was acrylic. I donated it back to charity and now have a very firm policy that no label = no purchase!
Tip – Don’t just look for yarn in charity shops. I also look for needles, hooks, pattern books, handmade quilts and blankets, handmade jumpers and vintage pure wool British made jumpers <<< I picked one of these up yesterday in a charity shop in Knutsford in the Menswear section (you can see it further down the blog post). My friend previously bought a beautiful, vintage hand sewn quilt for £5!
Scrapstores
I know that scrapstores aren’t just a UK thing. We have one in Stoke-on-Trent and it has a section just for wool and needles/ hooks. Much of the yarn in my local store doesn’t have a label, so you don’t really know what fibre blend or yarn weight you are buying.
So, if you are going to your local scrapstore for yarn, treat it like a charity shop and go often and don’t expect to know what you are buying. It should be very affordable way to buy yarn though. Remember that you can do the burn test to try to work out what the fire is.
Other Options for Second Hand Yarn
Unravelling Clothes
Look for handmade or quality yarn blend (think cashmere) items in thrift and charity shops or on Vinted that don’t seem to have been worn. Sometimes you will see some that are made with gorgeous hand dyed yarn but for whatever reason, the maker is selling the finished object.
This can be a very affordable way of buying hand dyed or luxurious yarn BUT, you need to be prepared to unravel it, skein it back up and wash it before you get to use it.
Ideally you would only do this if you could be sure that the item had never been worn or had so little wear that no felting had occurred in high-wear areas. These are usually at the under arms, elbows and cuffs. If there are any signs of felting in these areas, these will be difficult to unravel and leave you with large areas of unusable yarn, so probably not worth the purchase.
As is to prove a point, after I hit publish on this post, I headed to my local town and got an unworn cashmere jumper for £6. I will keep it in its jumper form, but it is also ideal for unravelling and making into something else.
If you do unravel an item, they yarn will need to be straightened before you reuse it. My blog “Should I Straighten Frogged Yarn?” will help guide you through that process.
Craft Group Swaps
If you have a local crafting group, why not have a get together where everyone brings yarn and crafting items that they no longer want. You can then swap it out for things that you are interested in.
I have run a few of these sessions over the years and it has always gone down well. People find new homes for stash they no longer love and others get new yarns or crafting items that they do want to work with.
No money is exchanged, just a good, old fashioned swap of resources.
Tip – be prepared to let go of the things you no longer want and possibly not receive anything in return.
Look For More Than Yarn in Charity & Vintage Shops
If I am going somewhere new I always do an internet search to see if there are any good charity shops or vintage boutiques. I even do this if I am abroad and have found yarny treasure in some incredible places.
As a crafter, you can probably also spot a handmade item from 50 paces. The quality of work and fibres used, usually scream “I wasn’t made in a factory”.
This kind of shopping is a long game, but very enjoyable if you love a bit of a rummage. I always focus in on the jumper rails and the boxes of accessories.
This gorgeous green jumper came from Humana, a vintage charity shop in Barcelona. It is a laceweight alpaca and silk cabled jumper. It was only €15 – an absolute bargain for something that I would never have the patience to knit for myself. This is probably 100+ hours of work.
I bought the vintage blue wool jumper yesterday for £7.49 from a charity shop. It was going to be an over-sized winter jumper for me, but has now been claimed by my uber-trendy, vintage loving, 27 year old nephew!
These gorgeous colour-work mittens came from a deep rummage in the accessory box of my favourite local charity shop. They were £2 and had a little coffee stain on them. I took a punt on them being pure wool and the fact that the stain would come out. <<< Probably the best £2 I have ever spent in a charity shop!
In Conclusion
Thrifting for pre-owned yarn is a lot of fun but is best approached with an open mind and no long-term plans. You never know when or what the Second Hand Gods have in store for you, but frequent searching is always your best way to find treasure.
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