Pre-Sweaters

I've been getting new goodies in the mail this week!

It all started with an ill-advised cold-turkey yarn diet.  My friends and family have come to know that when I declare "I'm not buying any yarn right now!", I literally mean that right now, at this very moment, I am not in the middle of the purchasing process for buying yarn.  In my mind I mean that I'm not increasing my stash at all until I knit the whole thing, but history has shown us that this hasn't happened even once, and the stash acquisition continues, usually in spectacular form after a drought.

I was doing very well, having not purchased any yarn since my visit to Stitches West in February, but suddenly the beast needed to be fed, and here I am showing you

SWEATER QUANTITIES!

This is slightly out of the ordinary for me!  If you go back to my Stitches post, you see what is my normal - single skeins of sock yarn or lace, perhaps 2 for a larger project or colorwork.  In fact, looking at my bank account this week, that would have been cheaper.  XD  But I'm excited about doing something a little different!

It started with a post on another blog, written by my friend Darcy.  Funny enough, I had been pondering the exact same thing that day, and had considered writing a post about it here, but she had beaten me to it (without us discussing it or anything)!  While I've made sweaters in the past, lately I've been sticking to projects that don't necessarily need to "fit" - mitts, shawlettes, etc.  I'm not at a weight that I'm particularly happy with, and thought of all the excuses to not make a sweater - I would lose weight and all that work would go to waste, it would look so much cuter on someone smaller than me, what if it doesn't fit, on and on.  But reading Darcy's post helped open my eyes that we all have excuses not to make a sweater, even though we all deserve one (yes, DESERVE).  So after starting a KAL/CAL called "You deserve a..." in our awesome little group on Ravelry, I decided that I would finally take the plunge on the Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos.  My friend Kate gave me this pattern last year for my birthday, and as we go in to Spring I think it's finally time I jump in!  I purchased some DK weight 100% silk in the colorway "Copper Penny" from Argosy Luxury Yarns, which is a color I have coveted for years.  So this "I deserve" moment was particularly indulgent and for the first time in a while, I'm actually really excited about casting on for a new sweater!

My other yarn comes to me by way of my friend Amber, who sadly recently discovered that she is allergic to alpaca.  It was one of those "sudden onset" type of things, so the alpaca she had been stashing for quite some time was suddenly a problem!  After properly sympathizing - "What?  Allergic to ALPACA??!  Oh noooooo, that's hoooooooorrible!" I later came back with "soooooo, whatcha gonna do with all that alpaca?"  Fortunately she accepted my offer of assistance, and I scored a sweater quantity of Ultra Alpaca in 3 shades of blue!  I have my mind on a stripey raglan pullover, we'll see if I can get that to work with the 3 colors I snagged.  I've worked with this yarn once before, making a cabled scarf.  I can be very picky about what yarn goes near my neck (it needs to be SOFT), and Ultra Alpaca fits that bill!

I uh, I may have one other sweater quantity coming in the mail, too.  Future me, if you're reading this: remember what yarn diets do to you!