The Moon & the Mountain Knit Shawl

Clearly, hot summer weather doesn't stop me from knitting.

I needed a little break from knitting socks, but I didn't want to spend any money on yarn at the moment. So I dug into my stash and found the yarn to make this soft, beautiful shawl that I spotted on Craftsy.

Pattern: The Moon & the Mountain (also available as a kit on Craftsy that comes with both the yarn and the pattern)
Yarn: Cloudborn Superwash Merino Bulky in Grey Heather and Ocean

I like this pattern because once you get the stripe repeat down, you just have to refer to a handy little chart to figure out how far over to begin the Ocean stripes. The shawl worked up pretty quickly, and it was a nice project to work on while watching TV. (I watched the Tom Petty Running Down a Dream documentary on Netflix while I worked on this. And yes, the documentary is four hours long. So worth it.)

A Goodwill Tricot Vintage Skirt Gets a New Home

A few months ago, I spotted this awesome unfinished skirt at a Blackberg Creative Studios pop-up shop. It had to be mine.

The skirt had a hand-stitched hem and lovely machine-stitched seams, but it was missing a waistband. I decided that since I didn't have any matching tricot fabric at home, I would just cut from the top of the skirt to make a new waistband.

Nietzsche is like a little shadow these days, so I let him be in the picture.

The only downside to this vintage fabric is that it clings to your legs if you -- ahem -- don't do a great job shaving your legs. Or don't actually try to shave above the knee at all.

Check out those awesome colors!

This is what the top of the skirt looked like before I cut into it. I just measured twice the width of my elastic, plus a 1" seam allowance so I would know how much of the waistband to cut off. Then I used chalk to mark where I needed to cut.

I chopped off a few inches for the waist band, then I gathered the rest of the skirt.

I used an old length of elastic that I found in my great aunt's stash for the waistband. I like that it's a bit wider than the usual elastic, so it doesn't roll in on itself too easily.

Have you ever given an old skirt a makeover? It certainly did take less time than starting from scratch!