Before... and after!?!

You see these pictures everywhere...the infamous "before and after" photographs. Usually B&A pix are used to show how much better a person looks after mega weight loss, or a makeover--be it fashion, hair, makeup, or a room in your house. Somehow we are addicted to before and after pictures. They seem to say to us--"omigosh, can you believe how much better this person looks now that they____________ (fill in the blank: lost 200 lbs on this weight loss program, learned "what to wear", gave up thift store clothes, or stopped wearing 6 six coats of mascara, etc.). You get the idea. We love the ugly duckling turns into a swan or they all lived happily ever after stories. This is one of those stories. The leading character (ahem) is a greatly improved knitter who has no money and desperately wants yarn to knit a great sweater that fits. Let's set the scene:


I am so motivated by the new issue of Vogue Knitting! After knitting nothing but lace and socks for 2 years now I want to knit a real sweater--one that fits this time (see exhibits A&B above for evidence of excessively large sweater UFOs). Being of excessively limited financial resources I began digging through my yarn stash to see if I had anything good that could be coaxed into an awesome sweater. Frankly, despite the size of the stash, there wasn't much there for a fall/winter sweater (lots of craft store acrylic and summery stuff though). Two of the 3 best choices were trapped in limbo in partially, yes even mostly completed garments that were so big that the front half of the sweater could almost wrap around my entire body. Let's just say I'm a much better knitter these days and I understand more about gauge and how knitted fabric stretches.


So I present my before and after photos. Exhibit A is a lace pullover in a gorgeous 4ply lambswool (I didn't even know what 4 ply was when I bought the yarn online). It was supposed to be 22" wide and it's more like 30". Exhibit B is a superwash Aran wt wool--my 1st real yarn purchase at my LYS. It was on clearance at 50% off adn i figured that machine washable was a good thing for wool. I had never knit with wool before. After a visit to the frog pond and some serious unwinding-rewinding time I now have lovely yarn (Exhibit C). Now I have some great, natural fiber yarn with which to knit a sweater--out of real wool--and this time it *will* fit! Oh boy!