Hand-me-down Yarn (a la Cici)

This week I completed a new project using some hand-me-down yarn.

To set some context, I don’t like receiving hand-me-down yarn or fabric. I knit or sew with that which inspires me, and I find it difficult to get inspired by others’ cast off supplies. I hate saying no to my mother, but I’ve had to say no to her offers of fabric and yarn more times that I can recall. I try hard to avoid situations where I have to decline generous offers of yarn, because it is hard for me to get inspired by yarn that I didn’t pick out. We live in a teeny, tiny space, so there isn’t room to store a lot of yarn and fabric for use “someday”. I have received some great gifts of sock yarn in the past that I’ve enjoyed using, but in those cases they were picked out special for me and held more meaning that the typical hand-me-down yarn scenario.

So why did I work on this project using someone else’s yarn? Well it started last Saturday when my sister sent me a funny picture of a dog wearing a crocheted sweater that made it look like a sheep. It was hilarious and Cici would have looked perfect in it, but I just shook my head at it and tried to walk away from the computer. But of course, I couldn’t walk away without checking out Ravelry first to see if the pattern for the sheep sweater was available. I did uncover the source of the sheep sweater, but the pattern is still in development. While on Ravelry, I checked out the other 1,135 patterns for pet clothing (yes Ravelry has 1,135 patterns for pet clothing!) and was frustrated to discover that most dog sweaters are designed for dachshunds or yorkies, not for my muscle-bound staffy. Oh well, I didn’t want to knit Cici a sweater anyway.

As the hours passed by I continued to mull about the idea of a Cici sweater when I remembered I have some completely impractical white hand-me-down yarn in my stash. White and boucle – kind of like a sheep!  At Christmas my sister foisted a bag of yarn on me and said I should use it or give it away or something. It was a bag of quite nice boucle yarn, but not something I’m really interested in. When she gave it to me we were in the midst of family gathering chaos so there wasn’t much for me to do but accept it. But on Saturday I was happy I took it, as the wheels in my brain began to turn.

Then I remembered one other ball of yarn I had, that I didn’t necessarily want. One day a ball of bizarre pink and purple eyelash yarn showed up on our apartment. I questioned a friend of mine about it, since only she and our superintendent have keys to our apartment. Eyelash yarn didn’t seem to be what Simon, the Super would use, so it must have been left by our friend, but she claims it wasn’t her and blamed Cici for leaving the yarn. I decided that the yarn was not something I would ever use, but the frugal part of me kicked in and rather than throw it out, it got stashed away in a drawer.

So, bring all that background info together and the result was this completely impractical white sweater for Cici, with some lovely pink and purple trim. 

She loves it! (You can tell by the look of disdain on her face.)

The best thing about a dog, compared to a cat, is that a dog lets you play dress up with it. J

Two last thoughts… I’m very impressed with the fact that I was able to make up this pattern and it fits her perfectly, and I will never knit with eyelash yarn again.