sarah in nyc

When my daughter was in 8th or 9th grade I bought her a little cashmere blend cropped sweater in grey. She loved that sweater. So, when the neck wore out a few years ago, I crocheted over the  ripped neckline in a soft angora blend marled gray wool. My daughter finally admitted that she had worn that sweater to death of the past nearly ten years.  She asked me to keep an eye out for a replacement sweater. I remembered that I had a crew necked merino wool sweater similar to this one http://www.woolovers.us/cashmere-merino/womens/cashmere-ladies-crew-neck.aspx?cse=shoppingusa . The wool was lovely, but the shape was not very flattering. I decided to turn the unflattering sweater into my daughter's new shrug. It isn't hard to do this transformation. I  didn’t take photos as I worked, so my drawings will have to do. I cut the sweater on the dotted lines.  First I cut the sweater  East-West  at a point that made sense to me. Then I cut open the fro...

There isn’t too much that feels better than cashmere on the skin. I am always on the look out for cashmere sweaters in the thrift stores. A bad shape or an unfortunate color don’t detract a whole lot from a well priced sweater.  Any sweater can be re shaped or dyed, to suit my taste.   It’s generally warm in New York City apartments. I nearly always have a few windows open in my apartment, even on the coldest days. I usually wear a sleeveless dress topped by a cotton sweater while at home. When I go out I switch to a warmer wool, often cashmere cardigan.     I found this very pink cashmere v-neck at the Salvation Army this summer. It was half price.  I put it on yesterday for the first time over an orange paisley dress. I realized that I just wasn’t going to wear it  very often unless it was turned into a cardigan.   I folded the sweater in half and lined up the side seams to be sure that I would actually cut along the center front prop...

Here is my new dress with two different cardigans . The spotty one was given to me in a bag of hand me downs by my neighbor Oscar, who keeps my entire family looking spiffy. The sweater is part of a twin set. Wearing both together is too much of too much in my book. But I adore it with the smaller scale dotty look of the snake skin print. The grey sweater is a new purchase for me. I have been thrifting since my last year of college.The church here on Broadway and 96 th street ( St Francis of Assisi ) has a great thrift store if you like searching for jewels. That is, it is a great chaotic mess of garbage and terrific stuff. Long ago, I learned that the better edited a thrift store is, the better the stock, but the more you will pay. This store is not edited at all. The previous manager had a great pricing policy. If you were a regular, he would charge you $2 per item, no matter what the marked price. He left St Francis to go to business school. I keep thinking that it might hav...