Thrifty Thursday - Cake Tasting Cardigan

Welcome to the first post of the Thrifty Thursday series! I'm really excited about this series.

For our first adventure, I have a cute little cardigan re-work. I found this cute little number at ModCloth (if you haven't checked them out, you should!).

But, priced at $69.99, it's a little out of this momma's budget. Fear not- I have a solution!

I remembered having this cardigan that I purchased at the thrift shop some time ago (cue Macklemore in the background: "I'm gonna pop some tags, only got $20 in my pocket..."). I wore it a handful of times and then stored it away with my 'I'll wear it again after the baby comes' stash. (sorry for the poor photo lighting... the kids were in bed and I was taking advantage of the nighttime quiet!)

 

I also dug out some black yarn from my stash of random crafting paraphernalia and set to work.

 

 



I used a teeny tiny crochet hook to poke through the knit and pull the yarn back through. (I didn't pay attention to size, just that it was small enough to fit through the material, yet big enough to pull all of the yarn back through the cardigan).

 

 

After you poke your hook through, place the yarn over the hook...

 

 

And pull it through. You should have a loop of yarn coming through the front of the cardigan. (see picture below) If you look at the picture above, you can see my orange hook sticking out a bit. I left it in the loop of the stitches and only used the smaller hook for poking holes and pulling the loops. After I pulled a loop through, I took the smaller hook out and inserted the larger hook in the loop, creating the two loops you'll see on the orange hook in a minute.

 

Insert a larger hook (again, size is based on your preference/need) into the loop you just pulled through. I chose to insert my hook front to back. I suppose it wouldn't matter if you did it back to front, but I noticed it caused the loops to have a twist in them. After the loop is around your hook, bring the yarn over the hook in front of the loop (see below). This is known as, quite simply, "yarning over". Who woulda thought of that?? :-D

 

 

 

Pull through both loops on your hook. It should look like this:



 

 

Now, chain 3 (simply yarn over and pull through the loop on your hook 3 times):

 

 

Then repeat! Insert the smaller hook, yarn over it, pull through, insert larger hook, yarn over, pull through both, chain 3, repeat, repeat, repeat until you make your way all the way around! I've finished the waistline and plan to go around the sleeves and collar, as well as tacking down the lace a little bit.

 

 

Some people say this item is "free" since I already had the items, but I did have to buy them at one point in the past so let's say I got the cardigan for $4 at the thrift store, the skein of yarn for $2.88 at Walmart, and the hooks at Joann craft store for $1.99 each. Which means for around $10-11, I have a new look-alike sweater that saved me almost $60! That's a win-win in my book!

 

Until next time,

Cassie