Hello everyone!
I just remembered a story I have about thrifting yarns. Get ready for a semi-long story. TW, slightly gross, skip the story if you don’t wanna know.
So I thrift most of my yarns, you know, Goodwill, yard/garage sales, etc. and I got some new yarn from a garage sale and I was so excited to use this really pretty brown I had. I was just sitting down with the yarn, hook in hand, prepared to make a stuffed bear for whoever complimented it first (I am so bad about giving things away for free) and I smelled something funny. I sniffed the yarn and my hands and they smelled like urine. Human urine. I decided to soak it in water with dye safe laundry soap, and guess what? Bugs. Really big dead bugs. Now I love bugs, but not in my yarn, and it freaked me out a bit. I just decided to throw it out, I ain’t dealing with that, and washed the rest of my new yarn, just in case.
Anyway, story over. The takeaway? WASH YOUR THRIFTED YARN!! How do you was yarn without ruining it? Well, this is what I did: Fill your bathtub with hot water and toss the yarn in with some dye safe laundry soap. Let it soak for a couple hours (I did two or three) and then put it somewhere where it can air dry. I wouldn’t recommend putting in direct sunlight, I don’t know if it could sun-bleach the yarn, but I wouldn’t take the risk. DO NOT PUT YOUR YARN BALL/SKEIN IN THE WASHER OR DRYER! It will tangle the yarn.
That’s really all I had to say, thank you for reading this!
Zod/Jay
i had a similar thing happen, but it smelled heavily of cigarette smoke, not urine, and there were tons of bugs too >^< i put mine in lukewarm water with gentle dish soap in the tub and let it soak at least an hour, then left it to air dry on a towel inside and it was better, much agreed, always wash thrifted yarn folks 
