Earlier this month my friend Tracy Hepler threw an Ugly Holiday Sweater party — and I went uncostumed because I didn’t own any ugly sweaters. But if you’ve got an overabundance of them, here’s a DIY tutorial you can put to good use. Lifehacker’s Adam Dachis got his mom to make a video showing how to turn ugly sweaters into mittens — no knitting required!

The process looks fairly simple, so long as you know how to use a sewing machine. Just prewash your wool sweaters in hot water to felt them, download the patterns, then get to work!

Feeling lazy? You can always just outsource the upcycling work with Re:knit, the neat reknitting service that launched about a year ago. Right now, you can send in an old sweater to be reknit into a matching scarf and hat for $99.

Related topics: DIY, Eco-fashion