I finally just pulled out the purple sweater and ripped the sucker out. Now you see it…
Now you don’t…
One piece of advice. No matter how nice a sewn cast-off looks, I don’t recommend it if you ever plan on ripping it out. That took for…… ever….. But, once I got the cast-offs out I made quick work of the sweater with my ball winder. Only occasionally hit a few snags due to the alpaca in the yarn. The stockinette parts were much easier to rip out than the seed stitch borders. There were a few places were the yarn caught and broke, so I do have a couple smaller balls. What was really nice is once I got the yarn reskeined and into the bath, it came out beautifully. You would never know that it had been previously knitted.
Now, I just need to knit up a swatch to determine needles and size to be knit. New sweater here I come!