Monday, November 16, 2009

How many sweaters does one girl need?

Well, I have a pretty extensive gift list - or do I mean giftee list? - so really I do need a lot of sweaters for the mitten/glove/bag extravaganza scheduled for this year's GiftFrenzy.

But I would say too that greed has played a role in my continued accumulation of sweaters. That, and the 50% off sale on Friday at the thrift store, which was coincidentally the same day a friend asked whether I felt like heading back there:


The little red roll is representative of a large-size boiled wool jacket with knotted buttons made from the same fabric. How lucky am I? Not only can I use it for slippers and/or a bag, I will be able to use my new rotary cutter and self-healing mat to cut out little shapes for stitching onto contrasting slippers and bags. Oh, the excitement.

(we will not speak of the extra storage space all this requires, or my lack of courage this far with regard to actually cutting into any of this fabric.)

I'm especially pleased with this gorgeous thing by Bianca Nygard, which was felted when I found it and felted even more when I tossed it in the washer:


It's going to make a most awesome bag, don't you think?

And this one, whose 100% wool label I couldn't find until I got home, is from Abercrombie and Fitch:


It had a subtle pattern to start with, plus a lot of moth holes in the bottom cuff, but felted it went stiff as a board even as the pattern softened further. I think it will grow up to be a very manly pair of slippers.

1 comment:

TexNan said...

Since I have no chillun, Maire, you can't be a long lost child of mine, but I'm thinking we have to be related somehow. I just felted my last two sweaters yesterday. Tried a scarf from Peru, but though the tag says 100% wool it doesn't seem to have felted at all. Oh, well, the sweaters came out beautifully. Now to carve out some time to create!

Can't wait to see what you turn out.