It’s not always cheaper to knit for myself. On the line graph of work experience to savings, knitting gets comparatively cheaper the longer I work. Yarn as a teenager was a pretty considerable expense in babysitting money compared to sweaters from Forever 21 that would disintegrate on the first wash. Now comparing decent yarn to Everlane and Club Monaco, I usually break even or save a little. So what I’m making isn’t human-shaped art anymore, but a somewhat-reasonable way to build a wardrobe.

So when I added a simple garter stitch tank to my cart with an enormous pair of red palazzo pants, I thought twice about it.

I could make that. My last sweater ate up (parts of) 9 skeins of yarn. And I didn’t want to buy eight teeny skeins of red pima cotton. So I decided to ditch the idea of exact duplication and instead stretch a bunch of partial skeins to the limit and make a sister for my abstract sweater.

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