A girl does not live by sweater design critique alone, so now for something completely different . . . .
My friend, Melissa, and I get our girl-time together on Saturday mornings when we scour garage sales in better Chicago weather and estate sales in worse. Yesterday morning I pulled this off a rack (which was really a wooden rod suspended between two ladders).
What's so interesting about this sweater? Take a closer look at the tag below . . .
Yep, it's cashmere.
Now, I live in an upscale neighborhood (although on a more downscale block), so sighting a cashmere sweater in such an unnatural habitat as a garage sale is not uncommon. What is unusual is finding a sweater that is hand-knitting weight. You can see the individual stitches, even in the photo of the full garment.
To be honest, I spend a lot of time not only at garage sales, but also at thrift stores. My children are involved in musical theater, and I volunteer doing costume design and creation. It is always cheaper to start with fabric from a thrift store than to buy new yardage, not to mention saving time. So, for a few pre-production months every year, I haunt them. And, I never leave a thrift store without cruising down the sweater aisle. I've trained my eyes to spot that familiar haze of a cashmere knit, and I would boast that not many escape my notice. But, out of the hundred cashmere sweaters I've spotted in the past few years, only a handful have yarn thicker than dental floss. So when I see them, I grab them. Why?
Tomorrow I'll tell how I go from the first photo to the last and how much I paid for the sweater.
No comments:
Post a Comment