I have been wanting to knit a “big” project for a while. This summer I went to the Fibre Festival and finally purchased a large sweater worth of yarn. This was a very fancy yarn and I want to make a “serious sweater” with it but before I can do that, I needed to a) get through some of my existing yarn lest I get into hoarding mode with all the yarn that will never get knit b) get all the “silly” out of my system. The idea to make a “silly sweater” as a preparation for “serious sweater” was born.

I found a neat pattern perfect for all the combination of yarn I had in my stash since I got back into knitting over a decade ago and purchased good quality wool in bulk. This stash had many skeins of beautiful red that just isn’t “my” colour and several different shades of blue which is is “my” colour but there wasn’t enough of any particular one to make a large garment.

I liked the idea of a dress more than the sweater, and the pattern had instructions for a dress version, but I ended up going off script once I got to the bottom of the rib cage. I modified the red by adding rows of pink to it making it more friendly to my skin tone. The seven different shades of blue including some mohair that had both blue and pink in it made up the rest.

The original idea was to only wear this dress to movies since it was really a fun experiment not intended to be worn in public. Over the course of the process, I got to like it too much and friends convinced me that it is nice enough to wear outside.

Having completed the “silly dress” I was ready to make a “serious sweater” thus fulfilling one of my requirements. I still have enough yarn in my stash to make 4 more of these dresses so there might be more silly projects in the future. Can’t wait!