A productive day off

There isn't really anything fun about having to wake up at 7:00am on your day off to let in the workers who are continuing to demolish things in your house. Having said that, I had a very productive day.

After a little Guitar Hero, and watching them tile the walls for a little bit, I took a little trip to the Salvation Army Thrift Store a few miles from my house. Firstly, the place is huge. Figuring out where to start was a challenge, but I had also taken note of the 50% off store wide sign on the way in so was definitely determined to find something good! About 45 minutes later, I had found quite the load.

• Soft pink cardigan with brown collar: Wool/angora blend, bulky weight yarn that is buttery soft. If I had to liken it to a commercial yarn, I'd say Malabrigo! This one is already half unraveled and has come apart beautifully with no knots and no argument.
• Red Benetton sweater: 100% Merino wool and put together raglan style with no seams!! It's laceweight so may take a while to unravel but the no seams thing makes me a little giddy.
• Lemon sweater: 100% cashmere. It's a women's small but nonetheless I had to snatch it up. Best part about it? It was $0.95.
• Men's tweed sweater: Nice 100% wool in good condition. It is a tweedy yarn but is also begging to be overdyed.
  

The grand total price was $5.45 and I also found out that they have the 50% off sale on the last Friday of every month. I know where I'll be spending those Fridays!

I did have to run off to a lunch with some clients from work, but fortunately they're great guys and it's not a business lunch in the boring sense, so that was a good break. Then I had promised the husband to make moussaka for dinner. It's one of those meals that my mom used to make and that I loved as a kid but never tried for myself. This is the recipe I used and it turned out great. It took exactly an hour to prepare and then an hour and fifteen to bake. To top it off, our friend is on his way over with carrot cake for dessert! I could have dealt with a chance to sleep in but I definitely can't complain about how the day's been overall. =)

What is lavender, fuzzy and makes you sneeze?

After the success of unraveling my first sweater right before New Year's, which yielded about 800+ yards of yarn, I am finding my new supplement to the fiber arts to be quite entertaining. I've never been one for finding excellent thrifty deals but when I read about the finds that the thrifty folk on Ravelry (who inspired me to try this in the first place) seem to come across, I'm encouraged to keep looking!

The selection of thrift stores near home and work aren't wonderful, nor are these places super cheap. The concept of a wool sweater for $0.50 leaves me in awe and extremely jealous as I just can't see these particular stores selling for such prices.

• American Cancer Society (Burbank) - gorgeous stuff, but pretty expensive and more a place to go if you're trying to buy a $300 pair of designer jeans for $50.
• Goodwill (North Hollywood) - nice big and bright store, but terrible quality of sweaters right now. They're mostly acrylics and sweaters that just aren't in good condition.
• American Way Thrift Store (Burbank) - where I've been having the most success so far, but is accompanied by that very authentic thrift store "smell" to go with the dark and dusty warehouse looking room that it's comprised of. It also seems to be quite popular and is picked over quickly so the good stuff isn't around long enough to go on sale!

On my most recent trip this week, I went to American Way (at the intersection of Magnolia and California in Burbank, just in case any locals are reading this). The sweater section seems to be hugely depleted right now, probably on account of the 3 days of cold weather that we've had recently. Go figure that I would start trying to find sweaters to reclaim during the "cold" part of the year in L.A. Having said all that though, I did find a couple of nice sweaters.

The first is a beautiful lavender nylon/angora/wool blend. It appears to have been made in a raglan style and the seams have been pretty easy to work with. The downside being that I am completely covered in lavender angora rabbit fuzz and have had several sneezing sessions this afternoon seeing as it's taken over my office completely. The lace weight yarn that I'm getting from it seems worth it to me though and I am hoping to have well over 1000 yards once I'm done (insert happy dance).

The other sweater is a wool/rayon/angora/cashmere blend. The seams have been a little resistant but I am being patient and trying to remember how lovely and soft the yarn will be once I can get it undone. The other interesting thing is that what appears to be a worsted weight yarn in the sweater is actually 6 strands of lace weight. I'm going to keep it as a worsted 6-ply (sort of) because I don't really want to deal with un-stranding and weakening the yarn.

I am telling myself that this new fascination with commercially made sweaters is so that I can learn more about the formation of knitwear. After all, guys have been taking things apart to find out how they were put together for years right? =)

There's a hole in my cashmere!

Now that the weather has finally reduced itself to a nasty cold here in L.A., the winter clothing has been making its way out of the closet. So, when I put on one of my favorite sweaters this morning, I was definitely distraught to find this hole....I will say that the hungry moth that chowed down on my sweater has good taste seeing as this is the only cashmere sweater I own!! I'm pretty sure the incident occurred in the apartment I used to live in as I would find the occasional moth there. The weird part being that I haven't lived there for nearly 2 years and I've definitely worn this sweater since then. However, seeing as the hole is on the bottom toward the back, perhaps I just never noticed. Since taking up various fiber arts in the last couple of years, I've been a lot more conscious about watching for moths in general.

Of course, having found the hole this morning, my first thought was to check the seams to see if the yarn can be reclaimed and I'm completely in luck! I can't bring myself to rip up the sweater and recycle the yarn just yet, but I'm so happy to know that I have that option available to me. When I can finally bring myself to do it, I'm going to have a ton of pretty orange and cream lace weight cashmere to play with. Just like the clouds outside right now...there is a silver lining.