Woot!







I am enormously proud of this sweater. I can't quite remember when I bought the yarn, except that I know it was when we lived in the second house in Ann Arbor, which means post-1999. The yarn sat for at least a year or two before I did anything with it, because I didn't know the first thing about cables and for some reason I was afraid of them. I know I didn't start knitting it until 2003, when Jackie fell ill and Kathy and I were staying at Hope Lodge.

When I finally did get around to knitting it, I managed to get through the entire back and half of the front without really understanding how the cables were constructed. After Hope Lodge I stopped knitting it. And then I was afraid to start it up again because I worried that I'd screw it up.

But somehow (in the past six months, ever since I've joined Ravelry) I've come to understand cables. Once that happened, I could memorize the cable pattern, which meant I could go much faster. (It's a bit like going from reading letters to reading words. All of a sudden your brain can store a lot more information.) (Aside: Who says you can't learn a physical skill from the internet? Nobody under 25, that's for sure . . . )

Frustratingly, though, when I started it up again this Christmas I couldn't replicate one part of the pattern as well as I'd done at Hope Lodge; I ripped it back twice and tried many different techniques and I couldn't get my mojo back. But as Louise pointed out, it's probably something not too many people will notice. And it doesn't exactly look like a mistake; it looks like something else, but it still adds a nice overall effect to the sweater.

And sure enough, when I sewed it up, it felt as if the mistakes just fell out, or something; once I started putting the pieces together the overall pattern emerged and the detail wasn't so important. It felt sort of like taking off in a plane, and watching things get smaller and smaller.

I really like the fit. It's more closely-fitting than I usually think of Arans as being, but it reminds me of something from the 40s, and I think it looks wonderful. (If I do say so myself. Like I said, I'm proud.) Emil would like a slightly different fit, so I'm going to block it . . . sooner or later, certainly before next year. (Really, the urgency is gone. It's been balmy and sunny here lately.) Also, I'm pleased that Emil finds the sweater saisfyingly warm; he actually took it off the other day because he was hot. (That never happens.) I think it'll be just the ticket when the temperature dips below freezing next year.

Like all the garments I've knit, the sweater reminds me of what was going on during the time in which I was knitting it. If I bought the yarn in 1999, Emily would have been ten and Charlie, twelve. They are now about to turn 19 and 21. In terms of our family life, that's a long stretch of time. They haven't exactly been the easiest of times, on many counts, as you all perhaps remember. But when I look at the sweater, I know that those hard times are well and truly gone. After all, it's finished, isn't it?