knit, then, wherever you may be

Like I said, yarn is expensive. A few weeks ago I found a sweater pattern that I wanted to make. Patterns are usually written for a particular yarn. You can substitute, of course, but it happens that the store up the street from me sells the yarn. I checked, and the yarn for this sweater would've cost $64. Uh, I could buy a better sweater for a lot less. Also, I just got laid off.

I asked my facebook friends how to get cheap yarn. One suggested a cheap brand but said, also, it feels cheap and it wears cheap. Then another said: buy thrift store sweaters and unravel them. I'd read about this online before but hadn't actually heard of anyone who'd tried it. So I read some tutorials and hit the thrift store.

Next thing I knew, I had 800-ish yards of baby blue cashmere and Swallowed My Flea had a new baby boy. I found a pattern online and knit for basically a week straight. I used circular needles so it didn't take up much space and carried my work in a little cloth bag so I could hide it in corners backstage during the Christmas show. I took it to the hospital (my dad was in the hospital - he's fine now) and knitted for hours. I knitted at restaurants. I knitted on the metro. And behold:

Totally cute cashmere baby blanket for less than $5 of materials. Aww yeah.