SFO: loved AND another giveaway!

I've been wracking my brains on the latest SFO topic, LOVED. The full prompt is as follows: this week’s theme is LOVED, as in your proudest accomplishment / most loved item / most frequently worn item / thing you saved up for / investment pieces / thing you worked a long time on / oldest thing that’s still in rotation. 

That's actually several different prompts, and I'm not sure how to answer all of them, nor do I have pictures to share of everything. But here's a go anyway.

My proudest accomplishment might be a maternity dress I made when I was pregnant with Daniel. It was a fully lined wrap dress made out of beautiful navy crepe backed satin that was a bitch to sew because it was so slippery and frayed so fast. I hand-basted every blasted seam and still had to sew each one twice or more because I did them all backwards or inside out. I blame the hormones. I had to set up the machine on the kitchen table and take everything down every time I worked on it, and I was in the middle of my doctoral degree, so it took months to finish. In the end I only had a couple opportunities to wear the dress, but it was beautiful and I was very, very proud of it...even though I had to safety pin the top closed to avoid flashing the audience during the two performances I wore it for. Sadly, I don't have the dress anymore, or even a picture of me wearing it.

My most loved item is hard to say. I don't really love my clothes. I don't even need to love my clothes. Maybe the most loved item I've ever made is a sweater for my dad. It was his Christmas present in 2006, and one of the first finished objects I blogged about. That means I have been blogging for nearly a decade. Huh.

Let me skip around a bit here. I don't own any investment pieces and the only things I've saved up for are my winter coat, which kind of needs replacing, along with my snow boots, one of which is coming apart and I've patched up with duct tape for the past two winters. Living in Wisconsin, functional winter gear is pretty important but I'm making do for now. This renovation project is not. cheap.

Things I've worked a long time on...let's see. The afore-mentioned maternity dress took a while. I've made some complex sweaters that took a little while, but I've written about those and don't want a reprise.

What I do have a picture of is both my most frequently worn item and the oldest item in rotation. It's this gray fleece jacket:

I know this jacket isn't going to knock anyone's socks off, but I really love it. I bought this jacket in August 2002. That summer, my husband and I went with his brother to Colorado to hike up a mountain. The day before we left from Wichita to drive to La Junta, we stopped in an outdoors store. I don't even remember what we were shopping for originally, but when I saw a rack of Patagonia jackets hanging there, just then it occurred to me that even though it was 100 degrees in the shade at sea level in central Kansas, in a few days we would be hiking up to 14,000ft where there very well could be snow, and maybe I'd want an extra layer. So I bought the jacket. It cost $72, which felt exorbitant for a young graduate student. The hike was difficult and exhilarating, and while there wasn't snow on the top of Mount Yale, it was windy and chilly up there in the thin mountain air, and I was glad I had that jacket. As you can see, I still have it to this day. I wear it in fall and spring. It keeps me warm on my bike commute, even down to 30 degrees if I've got a wool sweater on underneath.

The jacket has held up really well for the last thirteen years. No pills or tears, no worn elbows. The pockets are starting to rip, so my keys are constantly getting tangled in the mesh lining. I wonder if I can fix that, or sew new lining in? Or maybe it's time to replace it...they make these things lighter and sleeker these days, with thumbholes in the sleeves, and snug pockets for smartphones, which of course did not exist in 2002.

All righty. It's giveaway time! Only one person entered the last one so I wasn't sure if I should do this again, but I made a promise so here we go:

The dusty rose yarn on the right is about 200 yards of hand-dyed 100% bamboo. It's beautiful, but it's not for me. The two skeins on the left are a test batch of sport weight merino, about 150 yards each. The color of those is a little lighter in real life than on the screen, kind of a grape red. Beautiful, soft, but again not for me. These are yarns I thought I loved, but I've had them a long time and I haven't knit a stitch with them, so they need a new home. To enter, leave a comment below. I'll pick a winner Tuesday Oct 20 at 9:00pm central time.