First time for everything

I'm taking the Wardrobe Refashion challenge!

I pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 4 months. I pledge that i shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovoated, recylcled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftyness brings!

Signed,

Diana

Of course, my overachiever instinct was to sign up for the full six months, but I decided to start medium.

Now, there's something you don't see every day

So I'm blocking my drop-shoulder sweater that I've knit from the bottom so that I can knit the sleeves separately and sew them on. Apologies for the garish contrast of my blocking futon, and the piece really isn't as wonky as it looks; the camera was tippy.

The fabric is so nice. Mmmmmmm.....

Coming back

Now it can be told. My big project was running for Director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. But I didn't win, so now I have time to do things like blog about knitcheting.

So. I have been keeping up on Ravelry, at least, so I've been putting up the FOs I've been accumulating, as well as a project page for what I'm currently working on. I have lots of yarn. And in that lots of yarn is lots of luxury yarn, which I've done a much better job of collecting than using. A year or two ago, during one of my "go through the whole stash" exercises, which usually happen before Stitches, I put together yarns that I had collected in smaller amounts into, well, not kits, exactly, since I didn't really have projects in mind, but in sweater quantities of compatible colors and weights.

Last week, after I had finished a spate of smaller projects and was, quite frankly, longing for the campaign to be over, I rooted around and came up with a bag that contained some bronze tussah silk from ArtFibers, some very light taupe merino from someone's sale bin, and some fingering weight alpaca in a natural dark alpaca-brown. I swatched the Dice Check pattern from Barbara Walker's second Treasury, and really liked the fabric I got with a size 10 needle.

Even though I was ready to knit a sweater, I wasn't actually ready to do anything complicated, so this project is an uncharacteristic one for me: knit from the bottom up, and I plan to work drop sleeves. I didn't even want to think about working the slip stitch in the round and dealing with the jogs, so it's going to be a cardigan. And I have a great fondness for color patterns worked back and forth with three yarns, so that you never have to cut, so that's what I'm doing.

I doubt I'll write it up; it's not an interesting construction technique, and the beauty of the fabric depends on these obscure and sometimes anonymous stash yarns. But I'm very happy with it so far.