Everyone’s knitting! Join the latest DIY craze
If you’re anything like me, playground level finger-knitting is about as far as your knitting skills go. But seeing the best of this season’s delicious winter woollies in the shops is an inspiration. I am on the brink of borrowing someone’s granny and demanding lessons in knit-one-purl-one or whatever.
Our local haberdashery store window is full of gorgeous hand-knitted jumpers, cardis and coats at the moment but they’re not exactly cheap to make. The plainest one has a sticker on it proclaiming ‘make this jumper for £60′. Ouch. So, because I want to create a stripy autumn Technicolour masterpiece in plums, mustards, oranges, reds and rusts, I need to find a way to bring the cost of the wool right down.
The problem with most machine-made jumpers is they’re difficult to unravel back into a ball of wool. Hand knitted woollies are the easiest to undo. So I popped down town at the weekend on a second hand knitted jumper mission, with the following results:
- two huge, baggy 1980s mohair jumpers, one scarlet and one deep orange, which probably once belonged to Punks, for £3.99 each
- a really nasty hand-knitted cardigan in 100% pure plummy purple lambswool for £2.99
- three unused balls of pale orange wool for £1 each
- a vast mustard wool men’s tank top thing for £2 on the sale rail
All of which are proving nice and easy to unravel and wind into fresh wool for my autumn jumper.
I went into the haberdashery shop and spent an hour lusting after really expensive wools in fantastic, subtle autumn colours, some with shiny thread woven through them, and chose one special ball for a treat, a stunning scarlet with opalescent strands threaded through it for £6. Yum.
I’ve decided to do experimental stuff too, threading beads onto the wool as I knit. It might not work but I can always unravel it and start again if I make a hash of it. If I can’t track down a granny, I’ll find a knitting book. A cool project for cold, wintery weekday evenings and the best way to get a unique high fashion woolly for less.
Published November 1, 2011 & Filed in Interests
Tags: save money on knitting