If you have a little girl, you've probably heard of Pinkalicious. My daughter loves Pinkalicious because she and Pinkalicious share a love of all things pink. If you don't know the stories, everything Pinkalicious owns is pink. This pretty much makes her my daughter's hero. In fact, it's hard getting my wee one to wear any other color.

So, when a old knitting friend of mine brought me the almost-finished pieces of a beautiful purple sweater that wasn't going to fit her daughter anymore but would fit mine, I knew I would have to enlist the help of Pinkalicious' friend, Purplicious to convince my girl to wear this sweater. (Purplicious likes pink too. She likes it because it is "powerful" and can change blue into purple.)

The sweater is the adorable Blossom sweater by Knitting at Knoon (knit in some fabulous purple Cascade superwash). I actually recommended this sweater to my friend years ago because its subtly lacy, slightly hippy style instantly reminded me of her daughter. Four years later and she presents me with the practically finished sweater and the same comment. And she's right - it really is my girl's style. How perfect! All I had to do was seam it up, knit the collar and ties and block those sweet little picot edges. The finally finished sweater turns out to be the exact right size and the color looks great on wee one!

But, as you can see, she is still not entirely convinced that pink isn't still prettier.

No kids' sweater or fun hat today.

Instead we have an incredibly long sweater dress. No, not knitted by me. I'm sure it was knitted by some machine somewhere. Because, really, who is going to knit ALL of that?!

So, I've been in a bit of a funk recently. I'm not knitting much and not sewing at all. I pretty much crash on the sofa at night, exhausted from my new life as an overworked and underpaid chauffeur. (We've gotten to the point where the boys are having different activities at different times and each afternoon has me dropping one off, then setting the kitchen timer so I won't be late to pick up the other one and so on and so on. I did, however, find 35¢ in their laundry the other day, which I kept as a tip.) Anyhoo, when my mom brought me this crazy long sweater dress that belongs to her friend and asked me if I could alter it a bit for her, I thought a little something different might help me get back into the swing of things.

The dress is actually a pretty awesome cable knit. But very sensibly, my mom's friend would prefer that it were regular sweater length. After a quick consultation with my knitting group, I've got a plan. I'll be carefully cutting off the lower half, being sure to secure the stitches and then reclaiming a bunch of the yarn to reknit the ribbing. As long as it doesn't involve any grafting in that cable pattern, I can do it!

First it was my favorite cashmere sweater. Then it was a winter snack for some moths. Now, it's a dress for wee one.

Ta da! I managed to transform that old sweater into something wee one can actually wear! I felted it several times in the washing machine until it was about the right width for a toddler dress. Next, I pulled out some pattern pieces from the Pink Fig peasant-style tops I've been making and used them to cut out the body and sleeves. I kept the side seams and hem of the original sweater, just cutting into the sweater body for the armhole openings and neck, and did the same with the sleeves, even keeping the original ribbed cuffs. This allowed me to cut off almost all of the moth holes. There was still one moth hole on the lower front, so I stitched over it several times, then added a couple of pretty felt flowers right there. For the flowers, I used leftovers from wee one's elf hat as well as Amy Karol's clever method of creating the flower embellishments.

This is all a total experiment. I have no idea what will happen to the neck, the embroidery, the shirring after further washing. But it's a success so far and I certainly don't have any problems reworking it after a wash if necessary. Best of all, it is suuuuuuper soft. Wee one is pretty snuggly to start with, but now she's positively snugglicious!

a favorite JCrew cashmere sweater of mine, which evidently was a favorite of the moths as well

When I pulled this sweater out of storage this Fall, I was horrified to find the holes! Whatever sort of nasties I had in the closet (we've since had a giant clean up!) had very particular tastes, since they ignored all the wool sweaters and feasted only on the cashmere. After grieving a little for my favorite sweater, it occurred to me that there was plenty of good fabric still left there which I might be able to turn into a dress for wee one. I'm in the process of felting the sweater down a bit and am looking for information and inspiration from the book, Sweater Renewal: Felting Knits into New Sweaters and Accessories. The book has some useful info about different felting methods and different fibers and then a ton of projects that you can make from old sweaters. I'm a little nervous about cutting up the sweater, but I've got nothing to lose, right?

And wee one likes the sweater already!

"miiiiiiine"